Jedi Destiny II: Sins of Blood
by Mikells
Summary: Almost a year after Zak and Jaina's escape from the Dark Lord, Darth Pravus, they must once again rally their courage to fight off an invasion by the Second Imperium; all the while dealing with buried memories from those eight months surfacing in Zak.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

_**ALZOC 3**_

**18:03:21 ABY:**

_I was so excited, and I couldn't help from skipping my way down the long, mostly empty corridor._

_ I was on board a space station in orbit of the frozen world of Alzoc 3, and through the viewports that I passed by I could see the great shipyards below. Berthed in those yards were ships of varying classes, all under various stages of construction. But the most impressive sight was the massive shipyard above the planet's northern pole, where a single, massive ship sat, half completed._

_ There were commissioned ships in the system as well. Some of them I could see near the planet with their fighter squadrons zipping in and out, performing active combat patrols or escorting shuttles and transports._

_ It was my birthday today, and I would be thirteen in less than two hours. I was terribly excited about it._

_ My mother was expecting to see me at some point today, and I knew that she was a busy woman. Because of how busy I knew her to be, I'd decided to see her now, so that I wouldn't interrupt her busy schedule._

_ I skidded to a halt in front of the closed door of my mother's stateroom and popped it open without pausing to knock on it. I peeked around it to see that Mother was sitting on the edge of her bed, looking across the room and out through the single viewing portal to the shipyards nearby._

_ I dearly resisted the urge to reach out with my mind to see what occupied my mother's thoughts, and instead settled for a tiny cough to announce that I was there._

_ Mother turned her head and her lips broke into an almost genuine smile._

_ I'd never actually seen a genuine smile from her before—not once in thirteen years. It made me a little sad, actually. I couldn't understand why Mother always seemed like she was so very disturbed or saddened, and it bothered me that she wouldn't even admit that she was. But I braved it like any loving child and dutiful student should, and I refused to acknowledge my concerns._

_ "Good morning, my darling miracle," Mother said, standing up and stepping around the frame of the bed to meet me midway between it and the door I'd just stepped through._

_ We hugged for a moment, Mother clutching me tight to her breast before she let me go and held me at arms' length to study me._

_ I grinned back up at her, and ducked under her arm after a moment under her scrutiny to walk around and sit down on the edge of the bed, where Mother had been a moment ago._

_ "How has your morning been so far?" Mother asked me._

_ "Fantastic!" I said right away, looking up at Mother and patting the empty space beside me on the bed._

_ Mother took the hint and sat down next to me, never once taking her eyes away from mine._

_ "Lieutenant Corr is taking me out on a patrol today to let me get a feel for the fighter controls. He said that you wanted to add flight training to my education." Mother nodded and I smiled again. "And I finished!"_

_ "You did?" Mother said at once, knowing what I was talking about. I nodded. "May I see?"_

_ I nodded only once and reached into my robes to withdraw the bundle that had been kept safely there. I handed it over to Mother, who was now sitting beside me. I waited silently, eagerly, for her to check out my work and praise or critique my efforts._

_ Mother peeled away the layers of cloth that covered the prize within._

_ Inside lay a pair of lightsabers; identical in design, flawless in construction—as far as I knew. They were just a little over thirty centimetres in length and tapered to a round at the back end. Looped through that end was a thin, flexible metal ring that allowed the weapons to be hung from the hooks on my belt. Rubber grip strips covered most of the shaft casing. The blade adjuster and activation button on each lightsaber were grouped close together, and located just forward of the handgrips._

_ Sealed into the side of each lightsaber near the front in blocky lettering made sliced from small squares of durasteel were my initials._

_ I felt my mother's analysing probes sifting through the circuitry inside my lightsabers as she held each one up before her eyes, looking for any faults or overlooked essentials that I knew that she wouldn't find. But was that arrogance, or was that because I just _knew_ I hadn't missed anything?_

_ I sensed no surprise in Mother when she discovered that there was nothing missing and nothing faulty, and could feel only the barest touch of pride. She was reassured, if anything, of my capabilities, and that she had been a good teacher to me._

_ "Well done," Mother said evenly, holding one of the lightsabers up and pressing down on the activation switch._

_ A red blade of plasma shot out of the end of the lightsaber hilt to over a meter in length and stabilised instantly. Mother passed the blade through the air a few times, and fiddled with the adjustment dial for a little while before shutting the weapon off altogether and placing it with its sister and wrapping them both up in the cloth._

_ She handed them back to me and I tucked the bundle back into the inside of my robes. "They're beautiful. I especially like the personal touches you added. You have done extraordinarily well."_

_ "Thank you!" I said, grinning like an idiot._

_ I knew it was improper to display too much emotion for mother to see. She had brought me up to be the master of my emotions, instead of allowing them to master me. It would make me stronger, she'd always told me. But I couldn't contain the giddy feeling of having my skills at lightsaber construction confirmed._

_ "I used synth crystals, just like you suggested. You were right; they really _do_ yield better results than any of the other crystals that you showed me." I paused, and frowned. "But I didn't enjoy the stifling heat I had to endure while I was shaping them."_

_ Mother patted me on the shoulder reassuringly. "When am I ever wrong?" she said with a sly grin._

_ "There was that time on Hoth," I said, "when you walked, blinded by snow, straight into—"_

_ "When am I ever wrong when it matters?" Mother corrected, giving my shoulder a playful shove. I shrugged, unable to come up with an answer. "Exactly my point."_

_ We sat in silence for a little while after that, Mother's arm around my shoulders as we both gazed out through the viewport at the shipyards._

_ It was a silence brought on by the ulterior motive I had for being so eager to see my mother today, and I knew that she knew it was coming. She had promised me so many years ago that we would have a certain discussion on this very day, the day I turned thirteen and transformed invisibly from child to young adult._

_ Now that that day had finally come, I had high hopes that mother would keep her promise. I could sense, though, that she really didn't want to._

_ "Mother …" I started, speaking carefully and waiting just long enough before I did to make sure that she wouldn't start the conversation herself._

_ "Yes?" The word was almost a sigh._

_ "I _do_ have a father, don't I?"_

_ I heard the quick intake of breath, but sensed no real surprise in Mother; a reaction to the fact that the topic was actually going to be discussed, and that I wasn't going to back down and wait for her to bring it up—if she ever did._

_ "Yes, honey, you do," Mother said. There was that sadness again._

_ "Is he still alive?"_

_ Mother hesitated again. I kept calm, and actively stopped myself from probing her thoughts, resisting the urge to find the exact explanation for Mother's reluctance to go on. I knew there must have been a good reason for it. Maybe something bad had happened to him?_

_ "I guess so," she said eventually, quietly._

_ "What happened to him? Why isn't he here with us?" I asked. I made sure to keep my tone even, not belligerent or demanding or even disappointed. All I wanted was the information that I didn't have that I wanted to have. I asked my questions the same way I would ask questions in my day-to-day lessons with Mother._

_ "Your father—" Mother broke off, and got to her feet. She paced soundlessly across the deck to the viewport to look down at the icy planet some distance away._

_ I took the initiative. "If father meant so much to you as you have told me he did, then surely he would have wanted to be with us here … now?"_

_ "The problem is, my dear, that he isn't able to be with us here and now," Mother replied._

_ "Why not?"_

_ Mother turned to face me again, seeing that I was now perched patiently on the edge of her bed. My hands rested on my knees and I was half-turned toward her with my eyes locked onto hers to show her that I was listening intently to whatever explanation she was about to give me._

_ Mother sighed._

_ "I suppose … today _is_ the day I promised I would tell you what happened to him. And, I admit, I would prefer not to relive it; but I think you have a right to know that your father didn't abandon us." She breathed in the courage she would need, and then sat back down on the edge of the bed next to me._

_ "As I have told you, I met your father on Sullust nearly fourteen years ago," she started. "He and I didn't have a long time together by any standard. We only had a very short time together, but we felt for one another strongly, and, as you know, those feelings resulted in your conception."_

_ I nodded; encouragement for Mother to continue._

_ "Unfortunately for us, he was set upon by external forces, forces that sought to undo his greatness and rid the galaxy of anything good he could and would have brought to it. It was a cruel thing to do."_

_ "What happened to him, if he didn't die?"_

_ "He was ripped out of time."_

_ It took me a minute—in which Mother stopped—to work out what it was that she meant by that. I went over her wording, and touched her thoughts only lightly with the Force to get a feel of the meaning, until I pieced it all together._

_ "Yes," Mother said, reading the realisation from my face. "I was greatly upset at his disappearance. For a long time, I thought he had just abandoned me, left me without a word. I missed him terribly—I still do—but there is nothing I can do to save him."_

_ "Will I ever meet him?" I asked curiously._

_ Mother's eyes lost their focus; I recognised the look as one she often wore when she was trying to peer into the future to see certain events._

_ "I don't know," she said. "I can't see when, if ever, he will be returned to time. I … there is only one way I can think of that either of us will be guaranteed to see him in our lifetimes."_

_ "Do the same thing," I guessed. "Willingly put ourselves in stasis and wait to be awoken when he's ever freed."_

_ "Precisely." Mother looked away, adding to the emotions that I could sense threatening to overcome her and breach the surface. "But, as I said, I can't foresee how long that will be. It could be days or weeks. It could even be many, many years from now. For all I know …"_

_ She turned to look at me again, her face showing no hint of the roiling emotions within her. "For all I know, it may never happen in our natural life spans."_

_ "Then I'll do it," I said, standing up and smiling down at her. "There's no way I would ever pass up a chance like this, to meet my father."_

_ "But—"_

_ "Mother, I know that you have worries about that," I said knowingly. "But I just _have_ to meet him. I _have_ to have the chance to know what he's like. I've learnt so much from you over the years, and perhaps there are things I still could learn from you. But I could learn things from Father as well. What if I pass this chance up and he _isn't_ released until way beyond our time? How will I ever get the chance to know him and learn from him then?"_

_ My face became neutral once more, and I reached down to put a gentle hand against my mother's cheek. "There is still a chance he—and therefore I—will be awoken in your lifetime. We can be a proper family again. Wouldn't you want that?"_

_ "I …" Mother started, faltering. She looked up to see that I was smiling at her again to reassure her that I was confident we would all be together._

_ It didn't faze me in the slightest that I was so eager to abandon her to meet my father one day in the future. I was confident that it wouldn't be _too_ far into the future for her to be excluded from our lives._

_ "I was rather hoping we wouldn't have to resort to that kind of a family reunion, at least not for years, so that I could train you more."_

_ "Mother, please?" I pleaded._

_ Mother's face crumpled and she stood up and embraced me tightly again. I sensed the reluctance in her to let me go, the selfish desire to keep me all to herself so that she alone could teach me the wonders of the galaxy, as she nodded her consent._

_ "Whenever you're ready for this," she started softly, still holding me, "let me know. I beg of you; take more time to think about this, my daughter. While the allure of seeing your father, meeting him for the first time, learning all you can from him, is strong … I would go so long without you. There _is_ much that I could still teach you."_

_ I nodded and she released me and backed up a step so I could look into her eyes._

_ "I'll see about purchasing a cryo-unit and having it prepared in case you decide that you still want to go through with this."_

_ I pushed myself up on my tiptoes and planted a kiss on Mother's cheek, and then hugged her tightly again before releasing her and excusing myself._

_ On my way out, I stopped outside the doorway and turned to look back at my mother, standing motionless, soundless, and senseless where I'd left her. I felt a pang of sadness and guilt, and was about to turn to go when the comm. unit on the far wall bleeped loudly._

_ Mother looked to it, and then back over her shoulder at me and shrugged before she strode over to the unit and slapped on the receiver. I pulled the door almost to a close, and stood there, eavesdropping, though I knew I shouldn't._

_ "I thought I left explicit orders not to be disturbed today," Mother said flatly. I listened intently, hoping to hear something of interest._

_ "_Sorry, ma'am,_" the distorted voice of a young military officer who I knew replied across the comm. line. "_But we're receiving a communication from the Grand Inquisitor._"_

_ My interest was piqued instantly. I'd heard of the Grand Inquisitor before. He was the leader of the Inquisitorius. His people had been spoken of in hushed voices amongst some of my mother's servants._

_ From what information I could piece together from the rumours, the Inquisitorius was a secret organisation that reported directly to my mother. They performed secret tasks and went on secret missions that no one but my mother knew about, and more often than not got the intended results._

_ But that was all I knew. I wanted to know more about them, but to ask Mother would be to let her know that I'd heard things I probably shouldn't have, and to get those servants in trouble. For now, I figured I would work it out on my own._

_ "Put him through immediately," Mother said. I ducked out of the way as she shot a quick look over her shoulder. Hopefully, my presence was masked enough that she didn't know I was still standing there._

_ "_My lady,_" another voice started over the comm._

_ "What do you have to report?" my mother demanded emotionlessly._

_ "_Straight to business then. Our plan to set up the Shadow Academy is in motion. We have but one final concern to assess._"_

_ "What concern would that be?"_

_ "_Am I to assume that you would still prefer your existence to remain unknown to those outside of the Imperium?"

_ "Certainly."_

_ "_Then we will need someone suitably powerful in the Force to lead the Shadow Academy in its conflict with the Jedi. We have a candidate in mind, but I was rather hoping you would sanction it._"_

_ "Who is this candidate?" Mother lightly tapped her chin with her forefinger in thought._

_ "_The young man we seeded against Skywalker's academy on Yavin Four several years ago: Brakiss from Msst._"_

_ "Hmm." Mother stopped to think about it. I'd never heard of this Brakiss person before, or of any plan against the Jedi. I knew that the Jedi were bad though, and perhaps that plan had worked to some degree. "I like this idea. The boy had promise before Skywalker got his hooks into him. See what you can do about restoring that promise. But remember: no matter how trustworthy the boy proves, he is _never_ to know the truth of the Imperium. _Never!_"_

_ "_Understood, my lady._"_

_ The comm. sizzled and went dead, and I stood there, wondering what it was that I had just heard._


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

_**SENATE CHAMBER, GALACTIC CITY; CORUSCANT**_

**28:04:11 ABY:**

Every world in the Republic that had representatives in the Senate _was_ represented in the Senate today, which Leia Organa-Solo found to be extremely odd. In most Senate debates, sure there were a lot of representatives—but never a full house. That only happened when there was something critically important to discuss or debate.

As her husband, the famous Han Solo, wasn't so well versed in the political activities on Coruscant, she wouldn't expect him to notice the oddity of a full house. He even refused to admit its existence when his wife pointed it out to him.

Leia didn't hold a seat on the Senate, and hadn't since her days as Chief of State. But since word of the debate had been leaked to her, she felt the need to make an appearance so she could find out just what was going on. As such, she and her husband were standing in a viewing box usually reserved for special guests; Cakhmaim and Meewalh—Leia's personal Noghri bodyguards—were standing outside on either side of the door, making sure that no one came onto the platform without Leia's personal invitation.

C-3PO was also with her, standing quietly just inside the door awaiting orders.

Leia would much have preferred to be on Yavin 4, though. She and her husband had just been loading the _Falcon _for the trip there, in fact, when she'd heard about the Senate convening. Unfortunately, due to the unexpectedness of the senate congregation, their trip had been delayed.

It irritated Leia—and Han as well, she knew—as they both were eager to check on the progress of Zak Arranda's recovery. The Arrandas had been friends … of a sort … back in the days when Han Solo had been nothing more than a smuggler helping the Rebel Alliance, when Leia had been one of the Alliance's founding members, and when Luke had been an up-and-coming Jedi who was still mourning the loss of his first teacher.

It seemed that Han and Leia's children, Jacen, Jaina and Anakin, had grown to be friends with the Arrandas as well—Jaina especially had grown quite attached to Zak.

Looking around the chamber in the moments preceding the debate; Leia took notice of how much it was like the chamber of the Old Republic and the Galactic Empire.

Though she had served as an official representative in the Imperial Senate only briefly, and thus made few trips to the building with her foster parents, she remembered the grandness of it, the enormity.

The new chamber, rebuilt after the re-establishment of the Republic, had been built to the same model and scale, and as close to the original site as possible. From the exterior, it resembled a massive shield laid flat atop a thick drum base. Inside was a maze of corridors and offices and VIP guest rooms, all taking up spaces near the apex of the dome and around the edges of the rest of the structure. The rest of the interior was taken up by the Senate chamber itself, which was massive.

The chamber was as a funnelled well—the ceiling wider across than the floor. The walls were lined with hundreds, if not thousands, of decks, each one with a disc-pod anchored to it which had built-in repulsors on the underside to allow it individual and unhindered movement around the chamber. The centre of the chamber was empty, aside from the door-like floor plate.

Leia knew that when the Chief of State made his entrance, the floor plates would open and a separate pod, larger than the rest in the chamber, would extend up from the level beneath them on a long support arm, and that the Chief of State and his aides would be sitting or standing in it.

Such a time was upon them now.

The chatter in the chamber silenced as the doors opened without a sound and the central pod was elevated into the chamber. It stopped halfway to the ceiling, and the silence continued, all eyes now on the leader of the Republic waiting for him to address them all.

Leia ignored the exaggerated sigh from her husband. He, like many others within the Republic, wasn't a fan of Borsk Fey'lya. For a moment, she even thought she heard her husband mutter "here comes the poodoo", but she doubted he had.

"Senators of the Republic," Fey'lya started, his voice booming loudly in the chamber, amplified by speakers in each of the pods. "Thank you all for coming!"

There was a moment of silence before he continued, and Leia in that moment took the time to direct her gaze across the central pod to see its other inhabitants.

Seated in front of him were his two chief aides, a brown-haired Bothan male whose name was Tav Breil'lya, and a Twi'lek female called Annara Seyacn who served as the Chief of State's speech adviser. Standing on each side of the pod behind Borsk Fey'lya was another couple of faces she knew.

To the left behind Fey'lya was a human male with long dark hair and a strong, muscular build. He was dressed in a sand-coloured tunic and a dark brown robe which opened in the middle to show the lightsaber clipped to the front of his belt. He was a Jedi Knight by the name of Keyan Jace, who Leia had a close friendship with through her brother.

Standing on the other side of the Republic's leader was his apprentice, a human girl about the same age as Jacen and Jaina by the name of Talesa Valara. She had bright red hair, tied back in a tight knot at the back of her head today, and transitional eyes which were currently blue. Both of them were at rigid attention. Leia noticed that they did not have their gaze fixed on Fey'lya, or on any one point in particular; but that they were in fact scanning the entire periphery of the Senate chamber to ascertain any possible threats or dangers.

Leia could barely contain the laugh. Things must have been serious for Fey'lya if there were Jedi guarding him, and she knew the Bothan well enough to know how much he no doubt detested Keyan and Talesa's proximity.

But their shifting eyes made her uneasy, and she found herself unconsciously patting her hand reassuringly against her lightsaber, hidden in the side pocket of her trousers under the senators' gown she wore. She shot a sideways glance at her husband to see that he too was standing against the rail, his eyes too darting left and right as if looking for a threat.

"Something the matter?" she whispered.

"It's probably nothing," Han said. "I just don't like the way Jace and his kid are acting. I mean, true enough that Fey'lya isn't very popular, but it's as if they're expecting an assassination attempt."

Leia rolled her eyes at her husband calling Talesa a child. "When isn't there one? He's always accusing the Jedi of trying to rip him away from power," Leia said, nodding her head back towards the central pod.

"I'll have a word to Keyan when we're done here," she assured him. Her husband nodded beside her, but did not return to his seat.

Leia returned to the Chief of State's address to find that he had already started. "Would Senator Pwoe come forth and make her statement known to us?" Fey'lya boomed.

There was a hush among the senators and movement to Leia's right caught her eye.

She looked over to see a disc-pod three rows above her and seven columns over detach from its deck and float out into the chamber, beginning its slow rotation around the large chamber. A Quarran male stepped up to the front of the disc, dressed to the nines in aquatic blue robes with a high teal neck piece.

He looked around at the nearby senators before she began to speak.

"Fellow Senators, what I wish to discuss with you today is a matter that I know will result in much debate in the hours, perhaps days, to come. For there are many who would disagree with my standpoint on the matter," he began. "But I feel that this Republic is at a danger of placing too much trust and responsibility with the Jedi."

"Oh my stars, not this poodoo again," Han said, slapping his forehead with an open palm. He continued more quietly; "Now he's getting the senators to push his prejudices!"

Pwoe was right about one thing—the chamber erupted in a dichotomy of concord and outrage.

Leia was rightly angered by the statement. Regardless of how many times the issue was discussed, both as a Jedi herself and as a former Chief of State, Leia did not agree.

While it was true that the Jedi had not been able to foresee, nor stopper, the rise of the Galactic Empire, they had not been at fault for it. The Jedi were the guardians of peace and truth, and the administrators of justice throughout the galaxy when no other enforcement was able to oblige. They weren't mere soothsayers and healers.

If the Republic cut itself off from the Jedi, it would only serve as an open invitation for crime syndicates such as those owned by the Hutt or Dug clans to begin galactic corruption. Not to mention that the Sith might again try to worm their way back into government as Palpatine had.

Knowing there would be questions if she opened her mouth to challenge the accusation, Leia kept silent, and was silently amazed that Han could manage the same.

The Wookiee senator to her left roared for attention, and then began to speak in grunts, growls and rumbles that Leia, having married a man fluent in some Wookiee dialects, did not need a translator for. The senator's pod detached and beginning to float around the chamber.

"The chair has not recognised the representative from Kashyyyk at this time," Borsk Fey'lya growled fiercely over the loud din of cheers and jeers. He wasn't pleased at having his agenda interrupted.

The Wookiee pointedly ignored him. «The Jedi are our protectors and enforcers.»

"They were also protectors and enforcers in the waning days of the Old Republic—not to mention honorary generals within the military. And yet one of their most powerful was corrupted and in fact led to the undoing of the Republic. Can we really risk this happening again, senators, when there are already signs that it could happen at any moment?"

"Of what do you speak, Senator?" Fey'lya asked Pwoe, calmly and assured that what was about to be said would be something he would agree to.

Leia reached out with her thoughts to probe the Quarran senator, and sensed the probes of several other Jedi from within the chamber doing the same. She weaved through the other probes and into the senator's mind. Her heart skipped a beat at what she saw.

"There are reports," Pwoe began haughtily, looking down at a sheet of flimsiplast, "that there is a danger present at the Jedi Academy in the Yavin system, growing right under the nose of the _great_ Skywalker himself. Reports that a pair of students, one of them the child of the former Chief of State, Leia Organa-Solo, were taken prisoner by a man identified by the Jedi Order only as something called a Sith. It appeared that this 'Sith' planned to use the children in his plans to destroy the Jedi Order completely."

"Of this I am aware," Fey'lya said impatiently. "This Senate sanctioned the military attempt that failed to return the children to Skywalker's care."

"This Senate" clearly didn't apply to Fey'lya, who had been unable to legitimately find a reason to overturn the Senate's vote at the time.

"Then you are also aware, honourable President of the Senate, that those children were in fact able to enact their own escape, and fled here to the capital. Here, their captor pursued them, and they were forced into a conflict with the Sith in order to protect themselves."

"Please, Senator," Fey'lya urged, returning instantly to his calm tone again, "hurry to the point you intend to make. This information is not new to this Senate."

"One of those children was responsible for the death of this Sith," Pwoe replied.

Han's grip on the rail in front of them tightened until his knuckles went white, and Leia saw the beginnings of a scowl appearing on his face. She reached out and placed a soothing hand on his arm to calm him.

"A _child_ killed a Sith. Now, as I understand it, a Sith is the equivalent of, say, a Jedi Knight or Master like Skywalker. So, while under other circumstances, such an event would be laughable, and worthy of ridicule of this particular Sith's abilities, the events that followed are hardly amusing.

"The child in question, when returned to the academy at Yavin, then turned against his peers and mentors, resulting in a multitude of injuries, and Skywalker himself having to be treated for severe injuries from an attack upon his person.

"Now," Pwoe paused, and scoffed mockingly, "while Skywalker assures us that the situation is once again under control, and the student in question is no longer a threat, I think that a little scepticism is quite in order here."

«What are you proposing, senator?» the Wookiee Senator growled, his pod circling slowly around the Quarran delegation's. «That we sever all ties to the Jedi and exile them from the Republic? How would that make us any better than Palpatine's Empire?»

The Senate around them erupted again in outrage at the mention of the Sith who had ruled the galaxy for over three decades, first as the "benevolent" Chancellor of the Old Republic, and then as the Emperor of his own Empire.

"Hardly," Pwoe said with a dismissive wave. Leia frowned at his next words before they were even spoken. "Just that we should give serious though to some Republic oversight of the Jedi training facilities, and perhaps keep a particular eye on the situation on Yavin 4 to make sure that Jedi Skywalker hasn't just exaggerated the situation to alleviate the worries of the Senate and his own Council."

This was bad.

Leia stepped back from the rail and turned around to 3PO and her husband.

She thought about Pwoe's proposal, but not because she thought there was merit to it.

If the Republic wanted to send a representative to Yavin 4 to observe the situation there, that was reasonable enough. It was, after all, one of the reasons she and Han had taken more than their normal share of trips to the small moon in the past year. But what Pwoe, or perhaps Fey'lya himself, had in mind was a _Republic_ delegation, not one sent by the Jedi.

He harboured such distrust for the Jedi that he didn't trust them not to lie to the senate for Skywalker's benefit—or he was acting as Fey'lya's delivery man so that the Chief of State could escape the rebounding poodoo.

That meant that Leia and her husband would also be untrustworthy to her, as they were relations to Luke, had three Jedi children, and both very much in favour of the Jedi Order and how it was being managed.

But Leia knew that Luke was not going to approve of Republic interference at the Praxeum. And how could she blame him? If she were the most respected of the Jedi, the one who had brought the order back from the brink of extinction, and her teachings were being questioned and under scrutiny by those that had not known what the Jedi had once stood for, or were too old and bitter to remember, could she honestly say that she would be calm? No; of course she couldn't.

"Threepio," she started, gesturing for the droid to approach her. "Get to the _Falcon_ and send a message to Luke. Tell him to expect company, and why—you can send him a recording of the proceedings if you feel the need. Also tell him that we'll be doing all we can on this end to see that it's at least a _Jedi-led_ delegation that is sent, though understandably I can't promise anything."

"That seems very wise," C-3PO replied in his high, tinny voice. His photoreceptors dimmed for a moment and then lit up again. "Will there be anything else you wish for me to relay to Master Luke?"

"Not for the moment, Goldenrod. Just get onto that message, will you?" Han said. The droid nodded its head and shuffled around to head out through the door.

"Cakhmaim?" Leia called out. Both of the Noghri slipped in through the door, and Cakhmaim bowed at the waist until his nose almost touched the floor while Meewalh kept an eye and blaster trained on the door. "We're leaving. I must speak with a friend immediately."

"Very good, mistress," Cakhmaim hissed.

Leia turned to look out across the grand chamber to the central pod, and saw that Keyan Jace was staring straight back at her. She sent him an urgent request to meet, and saw him nod imperceptibly before she turned back around and followed Meewalh out into the corridor.

Han followed by her side. "I have a bad feeling about this," he said quietly beside her.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

_**OBSERVATION WARD, JEDI PRAXEUM; YAVIN 4**_

The black material of Zak's robe swished gently as he slipped into it, noticing that it was a little tighter since the last time he had worn it. He walked slowly toward the door separating the observation ward from the recovery ward and stopped.

It had been eight months since he and Jaina had fled from the clutches of the self-styled Sith Lord, Darth Pravus. Eight months since they had arrived at the galactic capital world of Coruscant and met up with Luke Skywalker, who had taken them straight back to the Praxeum on Yavin 4.

For most of those eight months, Zak had been a prisoner. He wasn't a prisoner in the way that indicated that he was treated with overt hostility, or that he'd been bound, or thrown into the Praxeum's detention cell. He'd been a prisoner in that he'd been in total isolation for roughly seven of those eight months back on the moon.

What little he knew; he had been … unwell.

Luke Skywalker, Rebekah Jordon, the resident Shi'ido Wanom Catoxle, and Jacen Solo had frequently visited him during his indisposition, and during the subsequent recovery, and eventually some of what had happened had been explained to him.

From what they'd told him, when Zak and Jaina had arrived on Coruscant, they'd been set upon by Pravus, who had followed them. Jaina had fought him off for a few moments until she'd been incapacitated.

But that much Zak was able to remember on his own. It was the rest that he couldn't recall.

According to the recount, Luke Skywalker arrived in a timely manner to distract the Sith from killing Jaina while Zak took her unconscious form back into the ship they had stolen. After doing so, apparently he had then left the ship and duelled not only Pravus, but Skywalker as well.

Though the elder Jedi did not want to get into it with much detail, he did say that it had ended with the death of the Sith at the hands of Zak—which surprised everyone that heard about it, even Zak—and that he had lapsed into a micro-coma.

Zak knew that he wasn't being given a full explanation of the events that followed.

All Luke and Jacen would tell him was that he had woken less than a week after arriving back on Yavin 4 and proceeded to act quite out of character. Luke had ordered Geesev, the Praxeum's GH-7 model medical droid, to induce a medical coma in Zak so that they could detect what was wrong with him and what they could do to fix it.

After several operations and bacta treatments, and a further month in coma for restorative recovery, he had been revived, and instructed that he would remain under observation for many more months in case of a relapse.

But Zak had been fine with that. He knew that if Luke Skywalker had a reason to detain him for observation, then it was a _good_ reason. Who was he to argue with the judgement of the Jedi Grand Master—a friend?

Now, almost six months after that, Zak was finally being given permission to leave.

Luke Skywalker had come to see him the previous day and told him that while there were some irreversible effects of what had happened to him, there had been no observed evidence that he posed a threat to anyone else at the academy. Jacen had been with his uncle then, and had told Zak that he would meet him in his room later to talk to him some more.

Zak hoped that what Jacen had to talk about would shed more light on what Zak had been through. Not having his memories was more than just inconvenient, it was frustrating.

He turned around, hearing the familiar hum of tiny repulsors behind him, and saw Geesev floating towards him from the other side of the room. It blinked at Zak, an action that had been puzzling the first time Zak had witnessed it over a standard year ago, and now only seemed natural in the time he had spent around the droid.

Zak reached out and placed a hand firmly on the droid's left shoulder joint. "Thank you," Zak said, adding to the list of thankyous he had given the droid over the past several months.

It blinked again, and bobbed its head in its own almost-comical version of a humanoid nod. He slipped his hand from the cold metal shoulder and turned back around to face the door. Geesev entered a code into the locking mechanism nearby and the doors hissed open.

Zak stepped through, taking a final look at the droid before the doors closed behind him.

* * *

Zak's robes continued to swish behind him after he left the infirmary altogether. He stopped at the lift tubes at the end of the eastern corridor and waited for one to open.

While he waited, he flexed his hand, feeling the tough black leather gloves stretch tightly across his hand as he did so.

Like the rest of his clothes, they were too small for him now, for he had grown a little in his confinement.

The centre lift opened. It was empty, so Zak stepped inside before it closed again. It was a short trip down to the next level and he stepped out without hesitation and waited as a group of students walked past him.

The group consisted of two students he knew—Raynar Thul and another whose name escaped him—and three others that he didn't recognise. Zak had a good memory when it came to remembering faces, so logically, he assumed that they had been brought to the Praxeum sometime during Zak's confinement.

When Raynar saw Zak standing there, he nodded in recognition—getting a nod in return—and continued to lead the small group down the corridor toward the recreational rooms. No doubt, they had come from the ground level, as they had rounded the blind corner the lift tubes were tucked against.

When they entered the rec room and left his sight, he ducked around the corner they had come from and proceeded to the next set of lifts, where he again waited. He stood patiently, leaning against the wall as he waited for one of the lifts to arrive for him, thinking on his condition.

While physically, he was completely healed, he had been suffering recurring headaches for most of his incarceration. While they'd been getting progressively weaker now than the intense migraines they'd started off as, they were still present, still a hindrance to attempts to actively reach out for the Force. He could have blocked out the stabbing pains, but that in itself would require a connection to the Force, and a level of concentration he didn't think he could muster quite yet. So he was left with the throbbing pain for however long until it dissipated entirely.

When the lift closest to him finally opened, a group of his peers stepped out, people he hadn't had the chance to meet when he had first arrived at the Praxeum before he and Jaina had been whisked away, but whom he knew had been around at the time. They were talking casually amongst themselves as they stepped out of the lift tube.

Zak stepped around them, not entirely missing the fact that they went completely silent upon spotting him, and into the lift. He didn't turn around just yet, as he could feel their eyes upon him; hear the harsh, hurried whispers filled with distrust and scorn.

The lift doors closed, cutting off the whispers, and he turned around, sighing in relief.

He still didn't have any memory of what had transpired from after seeing Jaina being knocked unconscious by Pravus on Coruscant to waking up in the infirmary for the first time during his post-op recovery. All he had were the recounts of Jacen and Luke to sustain his curiosity. They'd both insisted that his memories would return, and he believed them. He just wished they would return sooner.

The lift doors opened again to admit him to the ground level—the hanger bay—and he stepped out with a little hesitation and proceeded to cross the hangar towards the blast doors which were currently entirely open.

Sunlight streamed through the opening, lighting half the ground beneath him and tempting him out into the open.

He obliged, stepping through the wide entrance and into the open space of the landing pad and courtyard beyond.

It was warm outside, and by the position of Yavin high above, when he looked up, he guessed that it was around midday local time. There was little in the way of clouds overhead, leaving the sky mostly blue. The giant Massassi trees reached skyward, a thick, tall layer of dark purple trunks topped with a thinner, but still thick, layer of varying shades of green and the occasional spot of brown or yellow.

The landing pad before him, and the courtyard off to the side, were both littered with his peers, formed into individual social gatherings that numbered between two and six students. There were a couple off by themselves on the edge of the courtyard, either deep in meditation or practicing their mental abilities on nearby forest litter.

Zak saw a lot of familiar faces as he slowly started to walk across the landing pad to its outer edge. He was intercepted a few times by those who were eager to find out the end result of his operation and recovery, and to wish him well.

All he could tell them was that whatever Geesev had done had worked, and that after so long in recovery, Master Skywalker had finally deemed him well enough to resume attending regular lessons in a few days. This seemed to satisfy them enough that they would continue on to whatever they were doing.

No one else stopped him on his way across the pad, and he stopped just short of its edge and stared into the forest, trying to dredge up any of the memories he had lost.

Footsteps behind him alerted him to the approach of a pair of his peers and he turned around to see Rebekah Jordan and Wanom Catoxle standing behind him with smiles upon their faces.

He couldn't forget how attractive Rebekah was, for someone that had been living in the dense jungles of Yavin 4 for most, if not all, of her entire life. It was enough to make even the most devoutly sour man smile with appreciation.

She had tanned skin, a result of the amount of time that she spent outdoors in her free time as well as reflecting her life in the jungle. She also had blonde hair, almost the colour of Tash's with a streak of brown like Jaina's starting at the front on the left side and pulling backwards. It was natural; at least that's the way it had looked to Zak at first, and he smiled to see that she had not changed it. Her eyes were brown, much like his, which he saw were in an almost constant state of movement.

In the month she had spent following him and his friends before his kidnapping, he had noticed that Rebekah's eyes were always on the move, always seeking out potential threats and dangers.

A result of living so long in the wild, he had guessed, and it seemed that in the months since then, she had calmed some; come to see that she wasn't always at risk of danger.

She had a lithe figure, which served her well for hiding, as he had seen, and would serve her just as well if she was ever in a serious combat situation where she would require agility and speed over brute force. Zak had seen evidence that she could by far be the fastest runner out of all of the pupils attending Skywalker's Praxeum. She was dressed in the Jedi standard tunic and robes; her robes opened all the way down the middle, the hem stained with morning dew and the odd bit of grass.

Catoxle, on the other hand, was an entirely different, though equally puzzling, entity.

He was in his natural form, or what he insisted was his natural form, though for a Shi'ido no outsider could be entirely sure. His skin was a light grey colour, closer to the white-side of the spectrum, which contrasted the darker grey irises of his eyes. His hair was bleach-white—too white in Zak's opinion.

He was of average height and build in this form, and wasn't quite as fast or agile as Rebekah. Though, what he lacked in agility he more than made up for in his skill as a skinshifter.

Zak knew that he would have to have been somewhere around a century in age to be as skilled as he was at the art of shifting, and though he hadn't witnessed it for himself as yet, Jacen and Jaina's recounts would hardly be exaggeration.

His dark eyes, calmer than Rebekah's were locked onto Zak's as they stood there. He was dressed much the same as the young woman at his side, but with darker robes and a dark blue tunic underneath.

"Good afternoon, Zak Arranda," Catoxle greeted. "It's good to see that you have recovered from your ordeal in such a short length of time."

"Short isn't quite the way I'd describe it. But thank you all the time," Zak replied with a smile. He'd formed a close friendship with the shape-shifter during his incarceration, and had a lot of respect for his opinions. "And I would much prefer it if you didn't use my full name. It's not really necessary."

"I apologise." The Shi'ido bowed his head.

Zak looked around the courtyard and landing pad again, hoping to catch a glimpse of Jaina Solo or his sister Tash. Neither of them had visited him even once in the recovery ward and he thought that strange—especially considering the psychic bond he and Jaina had formed during their captivity.

He could sense her presence through the bond, but could not determine anything from it, such as thought or location. If anything, it felt like she was actively blocking him out.

He saw neither Jaina nor Tash anywhere in sight, nor did he see their friends Lowbacca the Wookiee, nephew of Chewbacca, or Tenel Ka the Hapan princess from Dathomir. He assumed that they were more than likely in the hangar bay, working on the Sentinel that Zak had found in the ruins of the Rebel cruiser in the forest the previous year, or they were otherwise occupied.

Rebekah coughed to draw his attention, and as if she had read his thoughts, she nodded with a grim smile and turned around.

Zak followed her gaze to see that Luke Skywalker had just stepped out of the hangar and was approaching them rather quickly, waving to several students as he passed them. He stopped before the trio, and Rebekah took a small sidestep so that Luke could see all three of them equally. Catoxle had turned around now to look upon his teacher, the warm smile still present on his face.

Zak bowed at once to Luke out of respect, and the other two followed. Though, he could not bow as far as he had once been able, due to the constricting of the robes.

"I'll see to it that you are tailored new clothes," Luke stated after nodding his head in response to the bows of his students. "You should have them by tonight."

"Thank you," Zak said, "I guess."

"How are you doing, Zak? I just heard that you'd left the infirmary. I was planning to meet you there before you left," the elder Jedi said.

"I'm fine," Zak replied with a small smile. "Thanks for asking. According to Geesev, I'm in perfect, if not better than perfect, health. Geesev says I should give it a day or two before I start back into my studies, or anything else strenuous on either mind or body."

"What about the headaches?"

Zak winced as a surge of pain throbbed through his head as a reminder. "They're getting better … slowly."

Luke nodded his understanding. He'd been one of the few that had visited Zak frequently throughout his ordeal. "Taking a few days to yourself so that the headaches subside some more is alright by me," he said simply, "but I would really like you back in classes as soon as you can possibly manage it. I don't think that it would be … pertinent for you to miss too much of your study."

"I haven't missed any as it is," Zak said sheepishly.

Luke blinked, and then understanding dawned on his face. "Jacen?" he said with a frown. Zak nodded. "Hmm. I shall have words with him about that. I specifically told him to do no such thing until you were more recovered."

"Don't be too harsh, Luke," Zak said apologetically. "It was at my insistence he kept me up to date with the teachings. I didn't want to fall behind."

"Does Geesev know?"

"I should think not," Zak said with a grin.

Luke nodded and then turned to the other two. "Rebekah, Wanom; can I have a moment with Zak?" Both of them nodded and walked off to the side and started to chatter excitedly amongst themselves about Zak's condition. He listened for only a moment before refocussing his attention on the Jedi Master.

"Problem?" he asked.

"Walk with me," the Jedi said, and turned in the opposite direction to Zak's friends and began to walk.

He followed the edge of the landing platform, Zak by his side, in silence for a moment before he spoke again. "Mara has made a rather unexpected request of me," he started. When Zak didn't respond, he continued. "She has asked for your assistance—by name."

Zak's eyes shot open in surprise, but he continued to walk. "Me?"

"You," Luke said. "As you know, she heads the physical combat classes here at the academy, and after seeing your skills in unarmed combat last year, regardless of how malicious the intent behind that skill was"—Zak cringed at the thought that he could have acted maliciously; the first time someone had even hinted at the intent of actions he could not remember—"she is convinced that you should assist her."

"My … skills?" Zak said uncertainly. He was sure that Luke would have passed on the fact of Zak's memory loss to his wife.

He still couldn't wrap his head around the word Luke had used to describe his actions the past year—_malicious_. Not when he was sure that he was incapable of acting in such a heinous manner.

"Your memory of the events following Coruscant will return," Luke insisted again. "I suspect that perhaps your subconscious will attempt to block some of the more traumatic ones out, but you will recover them all if you search yourself thoroughly enough, and continue to possess the same stubborn drive I remember from so many years ago," he added with a chuckle.

Zak smiled weakly at the thought, but nodded. "If I accept this proposal of hers, will it take any time off any of my other studies?"

"Five to ten minutes at most," Luke assured him quickly. "But that's a necessary sacrifice in order for you to reach the class and for you and Mara to discuss the lesson plan. You will be assisting her only in your own defence lessons, so you don't miss out on any of your other lessons entirely. She believes that the classes she has between each of yours will learn from the same lesson plan, so as not to draw you away from your other studies and it would provide more structure to the lessons."

"And if I should miss something of importance in those five or ten minutes?" Zak asked.

Skywalker chuckled lightly at the comment as they passed the edge of the landing pad and walked upon soft grass. "I will have one of your peers inform you of anything important that they feel you would wish to know, should you miss it—perhaps Jacen would like to continue in that role." He smiled. "As I have said many times before, Zak; 'do not take a course of action unless you have considered all the possible rewards and ramifications of that act'."

"Thank you, Master Skywalker." Zak bowed again.

"Formality isn't something that should exist between old friends, Zak," Luke said with a sly smile. "I'll go and inform Mara of your acceptance then, shall I?" Luke said. With another nod, he departed back towards the towering building. Rebekah and Catoxle caught up to Zak a second later, having been trailing behind them.

Zak turned to face them. "Well, that was productive now, wasn't it?" he said with a grin. Rebekah smiled back. "I don't mean to be an ignorant so-and-so, but I wouldn't mind going for a quiet walk."

"Oh?" Rebekah said inquiringly. A curious, suspicious look formed on her features. "Off for a stroll all by yourself, with a headache the size of the Boonta Eve run, with no one to keep you company?"

"Yes," Zak replied. "To clear my head, hopefully help get rid of this pounding headache."

"Take a pain killer and sleep it off," Rebekah suggested.

"It's not as simple as that, Bek. Geesev said it's going to be persistent for a while until it wears off altogether. Pain nullifiers aren't going to help. Side-effect of whatever operations he had to put me through to fix whatever was wrong with me."

"Rebekah is right, Zak," Catoxle added. "A simple walk could escalate the seriousness of this headache."

"With how strong I feel right now otherwise?" Zak replied, flexing his left arm. "I think I can handle a simple headache."

"And if you cannot?" Catoxle quizzed.

"I'll turn around and come right back home," Zak assured the shape-shifter.

The Shi'ido and the human girl were both silent for a moment as they each considered the odds of Zak ever actually following through with that. Zak saw Rebekah's thoughts, without actively reaching into her mind, and saw that she knew what he had planned, and was not going to let him go alone if she had a say in it.

"Which direction are you heading?" Rebekah asked after a pause. "I'll come and check up on you in an hour if you haven't returned by then, just in case."

Zak clicked his tongue. "North west," he said.

He saw the look on Rebekah's face become hard and disapproving as her suspicions of his motives were confirmed. She knew exactly what lay in that direction. She'd lived there for most, if not all, of her life until Zak's first year at the Praxeum when he had stumbled across her home.

"Be careful, Zak Arranda," Catoxle said.

_Be very careful_, Rebekah thought-spoke, her words echoing in his mind, inciting a stabbing pain that lasted for only a second.

With that, both of them nodded and stepped around him to continue onwards.

Zak watched them walk across the courtyard and merge into a group of students practicing their abilities on each other, and then turned towards the jungle. He started to walk, and no one made to intercept him, though he unknowingly ignored a small group of his peers that were trying to get his attention.

As he crossed the tree line, he was swamped by memories of his first visit to the jungle…

* * *

_It was dark out, but not too dark, really. Light from the stars in the night sky shone down upon the moon, bathing the surface with just enough light that I could make out the different shapes and shadows in the gloom._

_ I took several paces away from the outer edge of the great Jedi building and opened my eyes and my ears to the sounds of the jungle._

_ Whisper birds were quiet at this hour of the night, as were the few woolamanders that dared to approach so close to where humans had taken up residence. There was also the faint faraway buzz of a swarm of piranha beetles surging through the night air in search of food, and the slither of a crystal snake hidden somewhere in the nearby underbrush._

_ I couldn't stand crystal snakes. They were just too good at blending into their surroundings for me to appreciate the beauty that some claimed they possessed. I'd been bitten by one once, many years ago now. Uncle Hoole had been able to help me through that as well as capture the snake responsible and hand it to the nearest wildlife authority. I didn't care to repeat the experience though._

_ Then again, since I had no intention of entering the jungle at this time of the night, all by myself, I considered the chances of receiving another crystal snake bite were—_

_ There was movement beyond the tree line, distracting me from my train of thought. I squinted, allowing my eyes to adjust further to the lack of available light sources, and scanned the tree line for any further signs of movement._

_ I thought I saw a shadow move—something roughly the same size as me—but I considered that it was possible my mind was playing tricks on me._

_ At such a late hour in such a dark place on a moon I'd never set foot on before, I wasn't willing to rule out the possibility._

_ The breeze picked up a little, and I slipped on the gloves I'd tucked into my belt and crossed my arms over my chest the best I could in an attempt to keep the robe closed and myself warm._

_ Now that I was outside, I took the chance to fully observe my surroundings. The exterior walls of the academy stretched for dozens of meters both to the left and to the right of me. The tree line ahead of me on the edge of the courtyard seemed to follow the edge of the courtyard and landing pad, and I figured that it probably even encircled the entire perimeter._

_ I saw it again—the shadow!_

_ It looked like it could have been a human shadow. For all I knew, it could have been. I quickly reassessed my assumption that I was the only one awake. I didn't know many of the people in this place—save Skywalker and now the Solos … to a degree—and therefore, I wasn't able to guess their sleeping habits. Any of them could have had habits like I did._

_ Carefully, I took a few steps in the direction of the dark tree line, trying to see what was beyond or within that darkness, and failing._

_ When I got closer, however, there was movement again. The dark stain of shadow hiding in the dark jungle ducked out of my line of sight. I cursed silently and took a few more steps._

_ I wished so much that I could control my fledgling ability with the Force, enough that I could have sent a deliberate mental probe out into the jungle to identify who, or what, was in there moving around. But I wasn't that good; Tash might have been able to do it, but not me._

_ I brushed aside a shock of dense jungle undergrowth, defying the loud instinct that told me to stay out of the jungle at such a late hour. I was so determined to investigate that shadow._

* * *

Zak shrugged the memories from his mind, ignoring the pains it caused him, but more surfaced in their place …

* * *

_Part of me was screaming in my head to turn right back around and continue trying to get back to the academy; to ignore the strange and still unidentified shadow. Whoever or whatever it was could have been dangerous._

_ And yet, the adrenaline junkie in me was determined to find out who or what it was that appeared to be stalking me from the thick jungle._

_ But the most disturbing thing of all was that I could _feel_ the other being, the owner of that ominous silhouette._

_ Though the shadow had since left my line of sight—which admittedly wasn't very far considering the hour and surrounds—I could still track it by some kind of instinct that I couldn't exactly explain._

_ Was this the Force? Was this what it felt like for Luke Skywalker, and Tash, and the Solos?_

_ I didn't exactly know, and right at that particular moment, I didn't particularly care. I was going to listen to whatever silent instinct directed me through the thick brushes and trees towards the silhouette._

_ However, as I soon learned, it wasn't an entirely foolproof instinct._

_ Without warning, I suddenly found myself at the top end of a very, very steep, lightly grassy slope. It was completely devoid of trees, and was more or less smooth. But the slope's sudden appearance didn't register fast enough in my brain, and I stumbled over a tuft of grass at its peak._

_ I stumbled a few steps—an uncontrolled few steps—down the slope, and then tripped over my own feet and hit the ground hard, tumbling down the rest of it end over end._

_ In less than a minute, I was face down in the grass and dirt at the foot of the evil, conniving monstrosity of a landmark, and when I did, I landed hard on my left arm. There was no mistaking the feel of bones crushing and snapping below my elbow._

_ I felt so much pain, but I forced myself through sheer force of will not to cry out. It was almost unbearable. I couldn't recall any pain I'd ever endured before that was anything like it._

_ Bracing myself with my right hand, I looked around, still mostly on the ground, and saw nothing but grass and dirt and shadows that were being cast by dozens of different things. Amongst these was the humanoid shape again, closer than before but still entirely cloaked by shadows._

_ Unsteady, I pushed myself to my feet, using my right hand as a bracing point upon the ground. I staggered for a few steps as I regained my balance, my left arm hung useless and searing at my side and I winced with the jolt of pain that shot up it into my brain as I stood._

* * *

Zak pushed the memories from his mind altogether, not wishing to recall that night in its entirety.

While it had been the night he had met Rebekah, and made a new friend, the pain from his arm only served to remind him of the pain in his head.

True, the arm had been completely healed, as if the injury had never happened, but it was an empathic pain that would linger each time he remembered it.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

Over the next few days, Zak made repeated trips to the dead cruiser hidden in the heart of the jungle, each trip an attempt to ascertain whether his original assessment of its viability was still valid.

He knew that the ship as a whole would never be repaired with any of the tools they had in store at the academy or on Lando's station in orbit of the gas giant. But he had at least hoped that there'd be one working data terminal somewhere aboard that he could use to recover more information from, perhaps even command log entries. It was a magnificent ship, mechanically speaking, but Zak had a nagging suspicion that there was just something not quite right about its presence on the moon.

Eventually, he came to the decision to make it a point to do more detailed research later, preferably when his head didn't feel like it was hosting a live cantina band which played continually at beyond-regulation decibels.

Other than that, his original suspicions were confirmed with no more than cursory glances. That was how bad the condition of the ship had gotten. Upon the briefest of investigations of the ship's passageways and chambers, he saw that a lot of the systems had been fried to high hell by damage the ship had taken, and from the Imperial boarding parties.

Some of the damage looked like intentional sabotage—he could only guess by the boarding party—while some others looked like they'd been the victims of some ill-placed blaster fire. The remaining systems had been gutted for other uses since the ship's crash landing on the moon, and there was no way that they could simply be repaired.

There was little left of the ship's fusion generators in the secondary operations section—a secondary section which was not listed on the typical design specs for this class of ship—aside from a jumble of cables and wires and a few sheets of durasteel casing. He didn't even bother trying to gain access to the hyperdrive section.

Having given up on his excursions now, Zak was back at the Praxeum again on a fulltime basis; his few mandatory days of passive reintegration into the academy's populace were officially over.

Luke Skywalker had called a mass summons to the Grand Audience Chamber on the topmost level of the building, its apex, to impart something of obvious importance. Without knowing how, without touching the Force openly to find out, Zak knew already what it was that Skywalker wished to talk about. It was as if the moment the wizened Jedi had made the decision to make the announcement, Zak had inadvertently, and unknowingly, plucked the thought from his mind.

While the Grand Audience Chamber was certainly large enough to encompass the building's entire population, and then some, it rarely held such a number at any one time. Zak could recall only one instance since he had begun his training that it had happened, and he hadn't even been there with them. Not physically.

Still being kept in the infirmary under observation, he had resorted to delving into the mists of the Force to hang off Skywalker's every word, just as any dutiful student might, and bearing the resultant drilling migraine as best he could.

Returning back to the building from his trip to the cruiser that morning, Zak stopped by the infirmary to see if he had the all-clear to be around such a mass of people. When Geesev noted that it was acceptable, Zak had then gone straight to his quarters on the third floor and changed into a dark green pair of slacks and a white top opened at the neck—new clothes tailored to his new measurements. He threw his robe and tunic into the laundry bin by the door and left the room, closing but not locking the door behind him.

"Hey! Zak!" he heard a familiar voice call while waiting at the lifts.

He looked to his right to see Jacen Solo jogging down the hall from the corner. He slowed as he approached and dropped entirely to a steady walk until he reached Zak. Then he stopped beside him. "Going up?"

"Where else?" Zak responded automatically.

The lifts opened and Zak and Jacen jumped into the left one as a small group jumped into the one on the right. The door closed and shot them up to the next level before opening again to allow departure.

They waited for the group from the other lift to go ahead of them, and then followed them past Luke Skywalker's office and the supply room and through the double doors into the Grand Audience Chamber.

Looking around, Zak noted that Luke himself had not yet arrived, though he could sense the older Jedi nearby. Everyone else, mentors included, was either there already or coming in behind Jacen and Zak.

It was the first time Zak had been in the chamber, hidden memories notwithstanding. He found it to be wonderfully designed. It was basically squarish in shape, with a three-step in the middle of the platform where he and Jacen stood down to the main floor, and an identical three-step similarly placed directly opposite them.

On that other side of the chamber, there was a staircase, the beginnings of which were visible to Zak, on either side of the platform against the wall, ascending to roof entry doors that were probably security sealed. Angled between the platform Zak and Jacen stood on and the walls on their respective sides were banks of seats bolted to raised stone step-like blocks, each bank raised a little higher than the one in front.

Most of the seats were full by now, with Mara Jade Skywalker standing against the western wall near the front and Master Maru Chidor standing near the eastern wall. Both had their eyes closed, as if communing telepathically or meditating on their feet or simply concentrating on using the Force to filter out the chatter of the assembling students.

From his vantage point, Zak saw two empty seats in the western segment, down in the mid-rows, and he cringed at the prospect of sitting in either.

One of them was next to Jacen Solo's sister—and Zak's romantic interest from their brief captivity together—Jaina. The other was next to Zak's own sister, Tash. For a moment, he entertained the possibility that they had sat that way deliberately to force him into an uncomfortable position, but dismissed it almost immediately as paranoia.

He'd already judged from their nonexistent visits and Jacen's hesitation to discuss them with him for the past several months that neither woman saw him in a particularly flattering light at this point. Though, it stung him that Tash, who knew him probably the best, could feel that way.

Jacen attempted to urge Zak to follow him to the empty seats, but Zak merely shook his head and encouraged him on without him. Jacen shrugged and continued on alone, greeting both of the girls with a smile and a nod before sitting down next to his twin, leaving the seat beside Tash empty.

Zak felt a mental probe reach out in his direction just enough to confirm that he was there before it snapped back into the mind of its origin. Zak stretched out with his own mind, following it back, and touched only briefly upon Jaina's thoughts before she shut them off entirely.

In that moment, he sensed resentment towards him, and that she did not turn around, or even ask Jacen about him, confirmed that. Tash said not a word the entire time.

He walked along the back wall to the east side and followed the path down behind the banks of seats until he stood beside the Zabrak, Maru Chidor, who merely nodded at him. From there, he could see Tash, Jacen and Jaina perfectly, and see as well as sense whatever reactions the girls had to his presence there.

He watched the last few stragglers make their way into the audience chamber; Lowbacca following Rebekah and Catoxle along the second row on the eastern section and sitting down as seats became available. Tenel Ka parted from them when they entered, and deposited herself in the seat between Jacen and Tash without a word to either of them.

Zak smiled when he saw Jacen and Tenel Ka's hands clasp between them, when he felt the emotions burn between them, and then rushed to wipe the smile away when Jacen shot him a playful glare that said "mind your own business."

When Luke finally entered the chamber, it was from the staircase against the eastern wall, and he smiled at everyone as he made his way to the centre point of the landing he was on. When he stopped at that point, and silence had fallen amongst the young Jedi before him as if muted by an unseen force, he swept his gaze over them all, as if searching for missing people. They came to rest upon Zak and though he did not smile, he projected gratitude towards him at his presence.

Zak lowered his eyes for an instant, noting upon the long slashing cuts that looked like they had been roughly and unintentionally cut into the stone by lightsaber activity. He wondered about that.

* * *

_Lightsabers clashed, flashed, and sparked as they swung through the air over and over; One blade red, one blade green._

_ I danced around in a wide path as they wailed through the air towards each other again, and the blades crashed and hissed some more._

_ I was in the danger zone, and I needed to get out of it fast. The way those blades were swinging was dangerous, and yet somehow artful. There was grace behind the swing of the green blade, there was purpose. Behind the red one there was just strength, anger, brutality, the desire to hurt._

_ Combining those two was beautiful in a way, and scary in another—but mostly beautiful._

_ I focussed mostly on the green blade, watching where it went and judging by the illumination it shed as it arced through the cold air where the other person was. I couldn't see them. It was too black._

* * *

Zak yanked himself with great effort from the memory and found he was looking over at Luke Skywalker as the Jedi again swept his gaze left to right across the chamber, taking inventory. Apparently satisfied that he had everyone's attention, he began to speak.

"Good afternoon to you all," he opened, fanning the great chamber again with his gaze. "It's true that we rarely have a congregation of this size in this chamber, but I felt that it would be prudent to tell you all at once, rather than wait until each class's individual lessons with me.

"Your mentors and I have been conferring with regards to your studies and training to this point and we feel that, with the brief interruption to our schedule, you have all performed amicably." Zak ignored the one or two sets of eyes that turned his way, including Tash's piercing gaze, and shut off his thoughts from the few Force probes he felt incoming. "And while some of you may be willing, even eager, to continue to study, we have all come to a consensus that you deserve a brief respite."

A great deal of murmuring broke out amongst the crowd from those last words. Not everyone was reacting as yet, but Zak could see and feel the excitement in Jacen as he restrained himself from bouncing up and down in his seat.

In an instant, he gleaned his friend's intentions for his free time from his mind. In spite of his headache and his mood, it actually made him smile.

"Now, a lot of you have been working—overworking, really—yourselves far too much since the incidents last year, and while this is a rare thing for a teacher to say, I am not proud of this. There is such a thing as too much work in too little time. While it is true that recent events have probably spurred this new drive and determination as well as reminded us that we must forever be prepared for even the most unlikely of circumstances, rarely, if ever, are any of you getting enough time for yourself and your own personal interests or extracurricular activities."

Luke paused to take a breath before he continued. "As you are aware, this past year has taken a definite toll on the morale of all of our attendees, and the staff of this facility."

* * *

_I glanced up again as the green blade whizzed by too close to my ear. Frowning, I spun away and twirled my own lightsaber around my fingers, and snarled._

_ The other person similarly twirled his lightsaber, and charged forward._

_ I charged ahead, and was caught off-guard when he grabbed me by the forearm and spun me away from him while leaping in the air to avoid the wild strike I launched with my own lightsaber._

_ When I came out of the spin, I roared in outrage and flung out with my free hand, sending an invisible wave of the Force screaming through the air and slamming hard into the other's chest. I heard the discomforted "_oof_" of pain and grinned as I somersaulted through the air to cut off the attempted retreat of my foe after he recovered._

* * *

That was all he saw before it slipped away from him, leaving him temporarily dazed at the shock of what he had seen.

"It's also brought the attention of the Jedi Council and the Republic Senate, I'm afraid. It seems to be in the interests of the Senate, or should I say our illustrious Chief of State, that a Republic oversight delegation may be arriving here shortly. The last I heard, the Senate was still debating the issue, however."

Luke's face slackened into a look Zak knew represented the disdain he had for the idea. "Assuming the Senate passes the idea, the Republic's representatives intend to spend a week overseeing the structure and viability of continuing to support us here.

"Unfortunately for you all, their visit would happen to coincide with what I and my fellows had originally intended to be the halfway point of your rest period, so it has been cut down to a month, rather than two, so that the Republic reps will be able to oversee your classes and make appropriate observations."

Zak picked up on the undertone behind Luke's words, though he sensed that no one else in the great chamber had.

Either the New Republic's Chief of State, or someone in the Senate, wasn't happy with the Skywalkers' work at the Praxeum, or their methods of training young Jedi. And they were using the events of the previous year to establish their argument that Republic oversight of the installation needed to be put into effect—if only temporarily.

Briefly, a strange thought crossed Zak's mind; that the person who was convinced the Jedi needed Republic oversight needed to be reminded just who had brought the Jedi order back from the brink of extinction. And that that same Jedi had been an instrumental figure in overthrowing the Emperor and bringing peace back to the galaxy.

Instantly, he shook the thought away, unsure exactly where it had come from.

"There will be a formal greeting dinner on the night of the representatives' arrival. While highly unorthodox as it is, I do recommend abstaining from the usual dress wear just for that one occasion. Let's show them we can be civilised, hmm?" Zak saw the frown that settled in on the older Jedi's expression, and didn't doubt that others would have noticed it as well. "And I, of course, will expect nothing less than the most respectful behaviour from each and every one of you."

Luke continued to speak, but Zak couldn't concentrate on the words.

He felt someone attempt to probe the barriers to his thoughts that he had set up a moment ago and was about to strengthen them when he felt Jaina's thoughts and feelings colouring the probes.

She wasn't using the usual method either. She was using the telepathic bond that had formed between them from their time together last year. He looked over at her, but saw that her gaze never wavered from her uncle at the front. He didn't reach out across the link for her. He didn't need to.

_We need to talk_.

Then she withdrew the probe, back into her own mind, leaving the bitter-sounding telepathic impression upon his.

He watched as Skywalker finished addressing the crowd, and bowed his head as a signal that they were all dismissed.

Jedi students from every seat began to rise and make their own ways out of the crowded chamber, most attempting to rush to the lifts at the far back of the level and beat the crowd while others chose to exit more slowly to avoid it.

Maru Chidor next to Zak placed a hand on his shoulder and looked down at him with an encouraging smile before he hurried off into the crowd to attempt to maintain some semblance of order, while Mara, Luke and Jacen all approached Zak from their own places in the chamber. Together, the four of them watched as the others left until there was no one left in the chamber other than themselves.

Luke sighed heavily next to Zak. "I don't need the Force to foresee the result of this one," he said. "Jacen, we'd like a private word with Zak, if you would permit it."

"Sure thing, Uncle Luke," Jacen replied with a knowing smile. He placed his hand on Zak's shoulder for a moment and gave it a gentle squeeze. "See you in the hanger bay later?"

"Possibly," Zak said. "If I'm not there by midday, come looking for me," he added.

"Make that fourteen hundred, Jacen," Luke corrected.

Jacen nodded and left. Zak turned back to the two adults.

"You haven't yet spoken to either Jaina or your sister," Luke said, his eyebrows knit in worry. It wasn't a question, and Zak recognised as much.

"Not yet," Zak replied honestly. "Though Jaina did just request to see me. She would like a word."

"Ah, I wondered what your reaction was about. I couldn't sense the request." Luke smiled hopefully. "Jaina's mostly like her aunt, but she's a little like me in that she can be forgiving when it counts. If I could forgive you for what transpired—and I have—she will too.

"But, and I don't mean to sound sexist"—he glanced at his wife—"women do take things a lot more personally than we do. She needed all this time to overcome it on her own steam."

"Yeah," Zak started uncomfortably, "about what happened …"

"Still no memory?" Mara asked curiously.

Zak started to shake his head, the automatic response of late to that question, but stopped himself and frowned. "I don't know. Just now, I saw flashes of something. I don't know if it was memory or whatever it was."

"Could be memory," Luke mused. "Would you like to share what it was that you saw?"

Zak nodded and delved into his mind for the images he saw, and dropped the barriers shielding his thoughts so that the older Jedi could see them as they were brought forth.

And another memory hit him without warning.

* * *

_Again, the blade came close, but this time there was another coming in from the other side. Whereas the first was green, the new one was a lighter blue, and thrummed with just as much danger as the green._

_ But I had the second blade of my lightsaber already ignited, and I flicked my wrist to drive the blade down to block the surprise attack. The impact sent the tip of my blade punching into the ferrocrete-reinforced stone of the floor and I yanked it back out in an instant, whirling on the spot and twirling the hilt of my lightsaber through my fingers before slicing laterally at the one with the green blade._

_ Threats were everywhere, and I reached out to try and find others, but no … there were only the trio present—one presently out of the way._

_ I twisted my crimson blade around the green one, driving it deep into the floor and kicking hard at the face of the owner, sending him staggering backwards away from me. With that threat temporarily stunned, I turned to the surprise attacker, and reached out with my hand._

_ The blue-bladed lightsaber dropped to the floor, the blade sucked back into the hilt, and suddenly my hand was gripped tight around someone's throat and squeezing hard._

* * *

When the memory ended, Zak found himself in the most unexpected position and feeling very, very uncomfortable.

Luke Skywalker was flat-backed against the stone wall of the chamber and Zak was upon him, his left hand clenched around the Jedi's throat and just starting to squeeze tighter and tighter. There was a feral snarl in the air that he couldn't pinpoint at first, until he realised that it was hissing from between his own lips. Luke's eyes were wide with shock, but not fear, Zak noticed.

He felt pressure at his throat and reached out to sense that Mara was behind him, one arm wrapped around his throat and the other under his left arm, pulling backwards in a futile attempt to pry him off her husband.

His own eyes shot open. Horrified with himself, he released Luke and shook himself free of Mara's hold before stumbling away from them, almost tripping over a nearby seat. He regained his balance quickly and averted his eyes from both Jedi, who neither looked afraid nor angry with him. If anything, they both looked sad and concerned.

But _why_?

"That was most definitely a memory," Luke said softly, reaching out a hand to touch Zak's shoulder.

"What's happening to me?" Zak exclaimed, cringing away from the contact, his hand at his throat massaging away the residual pressure from Mara Jade Skywalker's chokehold on him.

Luke hesitated, but it was Mara that responded. "We don't exactly know," she said honestly, sitting in the chair next to Zak and looking him square in the eye.

She flicked a lock of red hair back over her shoulder as Zak took a few minutes to compose himself, to drive away whatever it was inside him that had caused him to lash out in his moment of distraction. It was then that he caught from his teachers' minds that there had been a reason they had wanted a word with him, and he wanted so much to forget what he had just done.

"Was there something you wanted to talk to me about?" he asked almost pleadingly.

Luke raised a surprised eyebrow and Zak read the meaning behind the expression.

Obviously, the elder Jedi had not expected Zak to read him so readily when he was actively concealing his thoughts from him—which Zak sensed he was doing. Zak had to admit to himself that his own strength, his connection to the Force now, was astounding, and sometimes it frightened him. Though, he would not admit it to anyone save himself.

Since his release from the infirmary, he had been actively trying to restrict his use of the Force as much as possible due to the pounding in his head that got worse with each instance he reached for it. Yet, somehow, he was using it without knowing, without trying, in fact despite his efforts to the contrary.

He'd first noticed it when he had been regained consciousness some time after the operation nearly a year ago. No one had told him why it was that he was suddenly so much stronger than before, so much deeply connected with the Force than he could ever remember being or hoped to be, but Luke had assured him that he would one day understand, and that his newfound power had a purpose, a destiny to be fulfilled.

"Yes." Luke nodded.

"I would like to see you on the last day of the rest period to discuss plans for our first new combat class and, more than likely, improve on any ideas that I have thus far," Mara added on queue. "With some luck, enough of those suppressed memories will have returned that we can work with what you were able to accomplish and what you learned under Brakiss's tutelage."

"What if I have another outburst like that?" Zak asked, looking from her to Luke and then back again. "What if I have one that's worse, and I actually hurt someone? Luke is one thing … but what about someone who might actually fight back?"

"We'll be ever watchful of you, Zak, in case of such episodes," Mara assured him with a grim smile.

Zak saw a light frown form on Luke's face as something occurred to him and Zak read the thought at once, deliberately.

"We're going to need a way to prevent it from happening while the Republic people are here, aren't we?" he asked. Luke nodded.

It would do no good for Zak to have another violent episode while they were hosting representatives from the Senate, and possibly the Jedi Council, who were most likely being dispatched to ascertain if there was any threatening behaviour at the academy.

"If you wouldn't mind continuing your private sessions with me over the course of this rest period," Luke started apologetically, "perhaps there is something we can do about it.

"I know you want to get this vision thing under control, and I apologise for yet another delay in that, but I think that this constitutes a much more serious problem to be solved. We can always go back to your visions once we've managed to get you to a state where you can experience these buried memories without the outbursts."

"That's fine with me," Zak said. Mara turned to her husband and sent him a private thought which Zak put all his mental strength into not listening to before she smiled at Zak once more and departed for the stairs.

Luke took Zak by the shoulder gently and led him back to the other side of the chamber towards his office.

"Starting right now, I think," he added cheerfully.

Zak walked with him, deep in thought. It appeared he was starting to realise just what had happened that had the Senate so worried.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

Jacen wasn't disappointed that he would have to wait an extra couple of hours for Zak. He'd sensed Zak's distress during his uncle's announcement growing until it practically exploded into a psychic shockwave through everyone's mind mere moments after everyone had been dismissed.

He knew that Luke would want words with him, and perhaps he had offered to help Zak overcome those outbursts.

If so, Jacen would be happy for Zak making progress in that way. A lot of the other students were still afraid of him, and others still regarded him no better than one would regard a dangerous pet they weren't sure if they should euthanize.

But when Zak finally arrived, he arrived with a cheerful smile and a bounce in his step that Jacen found infectious. Best of all, Jacen couldn't sense any darkness in his mind, or anything that would have hinted at his earlier distress. He liked that.

Zak had asked Jacen the previous day that he be shown the progress that had been made in fixing the Sentinel during his indisposition. Jacen most definitely planned to do so, but what Zak didn't know was that Jacen had a surprise in store for him as well, and it was a surprise he was confident his friend would appreciate.

Jacen met him halfway across the hangar and kept going in that direction. Zak turned mid-step and walked alongside him to the lifts near the machine shop. They were open and waiting for them, and they both stepped into the lift on the right.

Jacen entered a code into the control panel next to the door, shielding his thoughts from Zak as he did so, and watched the door slide shut in front of them before the lift began its descent.

He turned to face Zak. "Due to recent security issues, Uncle Luke had both ships moved to a secondary underground hangar that only he, Aunt Mara, and Master Chidor knew about."

"Hold on—ships _plural_?" Zak asked.

"Yes," Jacen said with a grin, "plural." The lift stopped and the door opened. He stepped out, and Zak followed close behind him.

They were now in a massive chamber hollowed out of the crust of the moon and lined with thick ferrocrete. It had a floor area larger than the ground level hangar of the Praxeum and the first underground hanger above the one they were in.

Durasteel bracers lined the walls from floor to ceiling in elegant arches, meeting in the middle of the ceiling and arcing down the opposite wall to the floor again.

Jacen thought that it gave the chamber a kind of bubble-in-a-box feel.

Powerful lights lit the chamber from above; flickering to life after Jacen flipped the switch by the door they had come through.

To their left was an assortment of workbenches strewn with junk and scrap metal and tools, while there was a wall partition to their right.

As they continued on into the hangar, the "junk pile" behind the partition came into view. Essentially, it was a large portion of the great hangar that had been set aside to store spare parts. It was loaded with a few smaller hyperdrive units, several dozen command consoles and empty, non-functional bacta tanks.

All of it had been in a state of disarray when Jacen, Tash, Rebekah, Lowbacca and Tenel Ka had first been shown into the hangar by Luke after the ships' move into it. But they had all spent a great deal of time cleaning it up and sorting everything into respectable looking slots and piles, depending on what function they served and what priority each would have as a spare part.

Further along on the other side of the heap was a quartet of cubicles, all closed at the moment, and each had a hook hanging by its door with a set of greasy grey-green overalls hanging from it.

Jacen turned to see Zak's reaction but his friend wasn't standing beside him anymore. Instead, he had approached the gleaming white nose of the Sentinel-class Imperial assault shuttle that he'd found in the jungle the previous year. Jacen grinned at the look of shock and awe on his friend's face.

The last time Zak had seen the shuttle, it had been covered in muck and grime from its life in the harsh wilderness. Its transparisteel cockpit viewport had been smashed out and the left wing almost entirely shorn off, as well as several cracks in the hull and gaps where plating had been stripped away.

Since then, Jacen had stripped the old pane out of the front of the cockpit and fitted new a sheet of transparisteel into the frame. Tenel Ka and Rebekah had worked on the other hull, sealing up all the cracks and slotting sheets of durasteel into the empty gaps. Lowbacca had worked on the interior of the ship, connecting new systems throughout the structure and hooking all of them into the command consoles in the cockpit.

Since Tash had no idea how else she could help, she had busied herself with cleaning up the hull until all the grime was gone and it was left sparkling white again, and she painted the new sheets of durasteel to match the rest of the shuttle.

"Wow," Zak breathed.

"I thought you might like it," Jacen replied, still grinning at the expression on Zak's face. "It took us about two months to finish, only working in our spare time. Lowbacca had the hardest job because you were under house arrest and Jaina refused to have anything to do with it."

Zak turned to face him and the expression changed from awe to confusion. "Jaina didn't help?"

"After what happened with you, she refused really to do much at all," Jacen explained. "She stopped attending classes for a while, ate only when everyone else was asleep—and even then not as regularly as she should have been—and she locked herself away for the longest time and refused contact with anyone else.

"We attempted to ask her for her help; suggesting that it might help her to move past it, to forget what had happened. She didn't even answer us. Luke and Mara said that we should give her space until she was ready to talk to us."

"I gather," Zak started, reaching up and running his hand along the cool metal of the nose of the shuttle, "that she eventually changed her mind?"

"After a few days alone with Aunt Mara," Jacen said grimly. "She'd been able to block off her feelings the entire time she was ignoring us all but when she talked to Mara, she just let it all out. I don't think there's a single person here that couldn't feel the anguish and sadness coming from her."

He saw the guilt forming in Zak's mind and he stopped himself from going further. "Sorry. Last thing I need to do is cause you to feel the same way. I can sense that there's more than meets the eye to your feelings for her."

His friend nodded after a moment's hesitation and Jacen forced a grim smile. "She did eventually start coming back into the real world, though, and interacting with people again. Everyone was very understanding and was able to be there for her when she needed it."

"By then, you were already finished with the Sentinel?" Zak guessed. He dropped his hand back to his side and turned to walk under the cockpit of the shuttle, where the landing ramp was already lowered and the entryway at its apex open and waiting.

"Pretty much," Jacen said. "The only thing we could have asked of her was a cursory examination of our work. Lowie was a bit annoyed by that, I can imagine."

"He's a Wookiee," Zak reminded him, climbing the ramp and ducking into the ship. Jacen followed him. "They'd take off your arms for less. But I suppose his Jedi training gives him the ability to take it in stride, rather than be insulted."

Zak was standing just inside the shuttle, looking up and down the hall connecting the troop compartments and the cockpit.

"Wow," Zak said again.

"We didn't skimp on a thing," Jacen assured him. "We even stocked the armoury with some blasters and thermal detonators and a couple of spare lightsabers for emergencies. We also loaded up the missile compartments and got all the weapons and shields in working order. Uncle Luke even took the liberty of loading one of the recon skiffs into the cargo area."

"Expecting trouble?" Zak asked with a cocked eyebrow. "I was expecting that this thing would be a shuttle. I didn't plan on arming her to the teeth."

"Even a transport needs to be able to defend itself. The shuttle already had the weapons ports and missile capacity; it's in the design specs. We just loaded her up is all. Striker Squadron is for the Praxeum's defence, not the _Recluse_'s."

"She's been named _Recluse_?" Zak asked, turning his head to look at Jacen.

"Tash's idea," Jacen said. "She was jealous that your ship got a name and since this one was designated property of the Praxeum during your incarceration, she thought she had as much right to name it as anyone else did."

"It's a good name. I—hold on." Zak stopped himself. "What ship? I don't have a ship."

"Follow me," Jacen said.

He turned and walked back down the ramp, Zak in tow, and rounded the shuttle for the other side of the hangar.

"Oh," Zak said quietly when they stopped a few feet from the second ship hidden in the hangar, propped up on the trio of claw-like landing struts.

The ship was a heavily armed transport formerly serving as one of Brakiss's private yachts. Jacen had noted the distinct frame and design of a Naboo personal transport when he'd first seen it. Such vessels had been common on Naboo in the waning days of the Old Republic, but had been outdated by newer design ships in recent years. But he later found out that this particular transport design had noticeable differences from the original.

For starters, it was much larger; Jacen could almost have called it a frigate, except that it wasn't. The sheer number of weapons on the ship's hull told Jacen that it had the capability of serving in the same capacity as a fully functional Imperial Tartan-class gunship at the very least.

It was three times the length of the _Millennium Falcon_, around twenty meters wide and almost as much high, encompassing four decks and the various sensor and weapon modules on the surface.

"Zak," Jacen said, putting his arm around his friend's shoulders, "I would like to introduce you to your ship, but I think the two of you are already acquainted."

"Mine?" Zak said incredulously.

"Well, technically ownership is split between you and my sister, but in essence, yes it is." Jacen steered Zak closer to the ship. "She's called the _Silent Hunter_."

Jacen had been very tempted to tell Zak about the _Silent Hunter_ when he'd visited him during his recovery.

Eight months ago, when Zak had killed Brakiss on Coruscant and subsequently lapsed into a coma, Luke had called Jacen on his comlink and told him to fly the transport they'd borrowed from Lando back to Yavin immediately. He himself had co-piloted the ship stolen by Zak and Jaina back to Yavin, arriving instantaneously. While Jaina hadn't been too surprised at this, it had shocked everyone else.

Jaina had then made a personal plea upon her uncle to keep the ship for herself, and Luke had locked it away in the underground hangar since and denied access to anyone but Jaina, as per her request. However, Jacen assumed that this was because of Zak's incapacitation.

That she considered the ship to belong to both of them, and Zak was with him now, he saw no harm in finally getting his chance to take a look at it.

"Nice name," Zak said with a nod. "But given what I was going through the past year, why wouldn't she have tried to grab total ownership for herself?"

"Hope," Jacen said. When Zak responded with another confused look, he continued. "As far as she was concerned, you _both_ commandeered the ship from the Imperium, and had none of the events of the past few months happened, she had no doubt that the pair of you would have equal ownership of it. She held the ship under both of your names with the hope that you would make a full recovery and that idea could still be salvaged."

"And yet she hasn't seen or said a word to me since Coruscant," Zak said softly.

Jacen patted him on the shoulder. "Not that you'd remember, no."

"Are we allowed to …?" Zak asked, enthusiasm sparking within him. Jacen sensed the eagerness begin to build up in his friend, almost matching his own curiosity.

He paused for a moment, unsure. "Sure. I mean so long as it's you, I don't suppose there's any harm. Technically, I'm barred access unless with permission from the ownership," he added as a hint.

"Then I formally grant you permission to board her with me." Zak grinned.

Zak led the way up the landing ramp off the side of the ship and up to the top. Once there, he slapped the controls to open the door and it slid aside to allow them entry. He crossed the threshold and waited for Jacen, who was initially reluctant to follow him.

He chuckled. "Come on in," he said cheerfully.

Jacen stepped over the threshold, eyeing the hatch frame suspiciously for alarm trips or nasty traps that his sister may have put in place to discourage undue curiosity.

There were none.

"Let's go on a little tour, shall we?" Zak said with a grin.

"You sure you're OK with me being here?" Jacen asked.

"Look," Zak started, "I haven't had the chance to fully explore this ship yet. Jaina and Luke may have done so at some point, but _I_ didn't get the chance. The only time I remember being on this ship was when we were escaping from Pravus' station, and I was a little too preoccupied at the time actually trying to escape to go wandering around the ship checking her out." Jacen still was uncertain, and his friend sensed that in him. "If she has a problem with it, send her to me about it. How does that sound?"

Jacen nodded and followed Zak past a ladder tube to an open lift beside it. They stepped inside and Zak took a moment to examine the controls before he pressed a button. No door closed in front of them; the lift just shot up.

Jacen saw flashes of other decks as they zipped past them to the topmost deck, and then they stepped out.

Deck one of four, Jacen knew, was where the cockpit was located. Though, he had not expected it to be so grand, and was surprised at how large it was, as if it belonged to a small cruiser and not a smaller transport.

There were eight stations; two at the front and three on either side pinned along the curves of the walls. The forward stations were a large panel across the front of the deck, separated in the middle by a holographic nav-projector of a similar design to that which Jacen had only seen aboard the newest of the light support ships of the fleet, and a small holo-com pad. The stations had auxiliary controls off to a side angle, and comfortably padded chairs in front of them, bolted to the floor, but able to swivel on their sturdy-looking stems.

The stations on the sides of the ship, Jacen could only guess the functions for, and none of them had secondary control panels like those at the front. They did, however, possess the same comfortable chairs the forward stations did.

At the centre of the deck, on a three-inch raised platform folding into the rest of the deck, was yet another seat, the most grand of the lot.

Zak had seated himself in it now and swivelled around to face Jacen, looking for all the galaxy like a sovereign upon his throne.

The back of the chair was just higher than the top of Zak's head and covered in blackened Rancor leather, with a silver Imperial standard printed on the back. It was the only seat possessive of armrests, and the ends of those rests had foldout controls for internal and external communication—he could only guess—as well as probably prime access to the other systems.

"Wow," he said in awe.

"Isn't she something?" Zak said with the largest of grins on his face.

"I'll concede that," Jacen said, turning on the spot and looking up at the ceiling to see a single glow panel casting generous illumination across the whole of the cockpit.

Zak patted the armrests a couple of times and then jumped out of the seat onto his feet. "Come on, let's go see the rest."

He led Jacen to the rear of the deck, passing through a recreational area much more plush and comfortable than the one on the _Millennium Falcon_.

A pair of long lounges wrapped around the wall on his right, curling around to meet midway. A singular lounge was bolted to the deck near the entrance to the cockpit and two more towards the rear of the room on opposing sides of a presently deactivated Djarik table which gleamed black and white and silver with newness.

When they travelled down to the second deck, Zak explained that this was new territory for him. The only deck, he said, he had been on were the top, and had only seen in and around the lift tube on the base level.

Exploring the second deck, they soon found that it served as the living area of the ship's crew and-or passengers.

There was one main cabin at the fore end of the deck, larger than the rest of them so Jacen automatically assumed it was for Brakiss' personal use. In it was a large, plain bed frame with soft bedding and blankets and pillows, a bedside table and a wardrobe, a vanity station and its own private 'fresher cabin.

If this did indeed serve as Brakiss' cabin, then it wasn't at all surprising that he would elect not to share a 'fresher with the rest of the crew.

There were two cabins on the starboard side of the deck, each with two cots, a pair of bedside tables and wardrobes to complement, and a lone table tucked away into the corner, and there was a third cabin on the port side that was similarly furnished—all of which were likely to belong to the transport's operating crew or any other passengers aboard.

The kitchen and foodstuffs lockers were beside that cabin, with the shared refresher cabin tucked away in the remaining space on the starboard side opposite. A dining table had been put down in the middle of the open space between the third room on the port side and the ascension tubes with another wraparound lounge and two chairs opposite it.

The remaining space on the deck provided ample room for many people to be moving about comfortably at once.

They spent no more than a minute on the third deck, and Zak explained it to be for engineering and critical systems. Towards the rear was the engineering section where the power generators, sub-light engines and the ship's equivalent of a hyperdrive was located and maintained. Just short of that was the station monitoring the life support systems and beside that was a small room containing the internal artificial gravity systems and another station which monitored its functionality.

That Jacen could see, while immaculately taken care of, the area was a jumble of systems and equipment. The only part of it that seemed to be ordered somewhat was the room up the front which acted in the function of a changing room, he guessed. In it was a few sets of clean mechanic overalls and off to the side was a table where a half-dozen toolboxes lay open, displaying the completed contents within.

And the final deck, the lowest deck, was the cargo area. It was divided into three parts. The hold on the port side was marked as the primary cargo bay, while the starboard one, which was a little smaller, was marked as the secondary. The front of the deck lay empty save for a repulsor jack used for transporting crates of goods on and off the ship, and the foremost part of it was in fact a wide loading ramp that could be lowered to load and offload cargo.

"I suppose there's no point to what I was going to say then," Jacen said, still awestruck by the sheer magnificence of the vessel.

"Humour me," Zak challenged.

"I was going to say that we had ideas for some upgrades," Jacen said, pacing towards the fore-end wall and touching it lightly. He turned around and paced back to Zak's side and swept his eyes across the deck to the ascension tubes. "But because Jaina refused to talk to any of us, or wouldn't let us even near the _Silent Hunter_, we couldn't get word to her of that."

"Has she even come down herself yet?" Zak asked out of curiosity.

"Well I would have thought so," Jacen replied, "because I expected her to leave trip systems to alert her if anyone decided to be a bit of a daring stickybeak. She would have come down to check them if she had."

Zak chuckled. "I don't think she would do that, not when everyone here is pretty much trustworthy to a fault."

"That's true," Jacen said. "Mostly," he added with a grin.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

Jacen stayed for another couple of hours before he left, stating to Zak that he had a gym date to keep with Tenel Ka and Raynar.

Zak accepted the excuse—for he knew that it was only an excuse—and allowed him to leave as quickly as he wanted to.

After Jacen left, Zak returned to the bridge and planted himself once more in the centre chair, where he closed his eyes and focussed on his connection with the Force.

Today, his headache was practically nonexistent, which he thought strange. But it left him a perfectly good opportunity to delve within the depths of the Force and meditate upon his amnesia, with the glimmer of hopes that he could retrieve even the most insignificant memory.

It wasn't long before he was granted such a wish.

* * *

_I kept my posture straight, and didn't move a muscle as I glared down at the man on the floor before me. The Sith was clutching at the stump of his left leg, panting to keep from groaning with the pain of the lightsaber injury. The flesh of the end of the stump was blackened, cauterised, and smoking. But Pravus's efforts to contain his own pain weren't entirely successful—a low grunt escaped his lips every few breaths with a fresh stab of pain._

_ Equally, I could barely contain my own anger and hatred for the man I glared at. So far, I'd let it serve to keep me alive and focussed on getting to this point, but I wanted to make Pravus suffer some before I killed him—retribution for what he had put me and Jaina through. But it was hard to restrain myself._

_ Every time I thought of what we'd been through, it just made that anger—made that hatred just that little bit stronger._

_ But there was that small voice in the back of my head that sobered me and, for now, kept the anger in check. That tiny, little voice injected just the barest hint of fear into my mind, reminding me that I was barely a Jedi, with only five months of training behind me. The man I had on the ferrocrete in front of me was a full Sith Lord with _many_ years of training behind him, both under Skywalker and by whatever darksiders he had aligned himself with in the past. The small voice told me that if I pressed my luck, if I kept at the Sith, there was a good chance I would die._

_ I ignored it._

_ There was another voice there too, behind the anger and rage; telling me to go ahead and kill the Sith for everything he'd put Jaina and I through. He couldn't get away with it. Not now, not ever. I had the chance now to make sure that he would never try it to anyone else in the future. Not ever._

_ But the other voice of reason kicked back, saying that I would betray everything the Jedi stood for if I just allowed myself to murder the man in cold blood. That voice told me that maybe Pravus had _deliberately_ treated us so bad just for the purpose of drawing out the darkness in me and making me do what I was contemplating._

_ The earlier memory I'd recalled about being in an unknown surgical laboratory on board the Sith's space station seemed to corroborate that the Sith had deeper plans for me than just training me and setting me loose._

_ Perhaps he _had_ meant to bring out my darkness._

_ "You don't like it, do you?" I said in a soft, but deadly voice._

_ I didn't give the monster the chance to respond. My hand shot out in front of me, and electrical plasma danced across my fingers and shot out in a hot stream of snapping, popping arcs. I held the assault against the Sith for several seconds before I released my hold on the Force and lowered my hand._

_ "No! No, no, no, no, please! Not again!" Pravus said weakly. I raised both of my hands this time, reading to release a stronger attack on the man. "Please! No! No, no, no, NO—AHHHHH!"_

_ I grabbed hold of the Force again, snatching up every ounce of power from within me and draining as much from the Sith as I could. I poured that power straight down my arms into my fingers and watched as the electricity shot out again, slamming hard into Pravus's chest and dancing along every limb._

_ The Sith seized and convulsed under the attack, screaming for all the good it would do him._

* * *

When Zak pulled himself free from his memory, he found he was breathless, and on the cold deck of the cockpit on his hands and knees. His hands and his face were hot, and when he looked down at his hands, he saw tiny arcs of static sparking between his fingers, gliding up their lengths to the tips and then winking out.

He pushed himself upright and looked around the cockpit to see smoke rising from a couple of blackened scorch marks on the walls and floor, and that holes had been burned through the leather and fabric of a couple of the chairs.

He reached out with his feelings, sensing that he was suddenly not alone, and then spun around to see Jaina Solo standing in the entry to the cockpit, her hands on her hips and an indignant frown pinned into place.

Her dark hair had been tied back behind her, slightly to the side, and her lightsaber hung from its place on her belt, easily within reach if she felt threatened by him like so many of his peers still did.

"Jaina!" he exclaimed in surprise. "I—"

"Save it," she said calmly, the frown staying in place. She dropped her hands from her hips and took a step across the threshold before she stopped again and looked around at the damage.

Zak could only guess that he was somehow responsible for it. After all, the last time he'd deliberately dredged up a memory, he'd reacted in much the same way those in his memory had—with physical violence and an intent to cause harm. This time, he'd lashed out with the Force, and by the sparks he had seen between his fingers, he could only guess that stronger arcs of electrical energy had leapt from him and struck random points around him before dissipating.

That Jaina would be a little upset or angry about that was only understandable. After all, she was part owner with regards to the ship.

"I know you let Jacen look around," she said, her voice remaining calm and level, which Zak found to be more than a little unnerving when he knew that she was at present anything but calm and level, "and I know that you were with him when he did."

"I should have come to—"

"Yes, you should have," Jaina responded, cutting him off. "Jacen should have—and I suspect he _did_—tell you that I declared the _Silent Hunter_ off-limits to everyone except for you and me. He was well aware of that."

Even though Zak felt guilty for whatever it was that he'd done to merit such callousness, and often ignorance, from Jaina, it was his stubbornness that won out in this instance, and he returned her frown with one of his own.

"He also said that you declared that I was part owner of the _Hunter_," he replied smartly. "Technically, that gives me as much right to overrule your lockdown of the ship as it does you. But, as I told Jacen, if you have any serious problem with that, then feel free to berate me all you want. I welcome it. Obviously I seem to deserve that kind of treatment."

Jaina started in surprise at his words. "You think so little of yourself that you actually believe that?"

Zak felt her reach for his mind along the private telepathic bond between them, but he made no effort to shut her out, no effort to shield himself from her probing inquisitiveness. He allowed her mind to sift through all of his current, and recent, thoughts, searching for whatever it was she hoped to find to either confirm or rebuke what she had just asked him.

When she didn't find it, the frown returned to her features. "Well?"

"No," Zak replied.

"Then why would you say such a barvy thing?" Jaina demanded hotly.

"Jaina; what more would you expect from me after what I've been through?" Zak said. When she didn't reply, he went on. "I was captured by the Second Imperium, and in the process being responsible for you being captured as well, and then subject to the harsh treatment of a Sith Lord. Then, I went through five months of relative hell—and I say relative because I had you there with me to make it just that tiny fraction bearable—and after that, _straight_ after that, when we finally escaped, I went through worse.

"I killed someone, Jaina. I took a life in cold blood. Do you realise how heavy that weighs on me, to know that I've done that? I've never had to kill in my life. Not once. Not ever. Not even in self defence. And when Luke and Jacen broke the news to me, I almost didn't want to believe it. I wanted so badly to think it was just one of Jacen's bad jokes.

"And what happened next? Well …" He scoffed. "Well I don't exactly know now do I?"

Jaina opened her mouth to speak, but Zak pressed on, stopping her. "I have the memories here. According to Luke they have to be here somewhere"—he tapped the side of his head with his finger—"but I can't get to them when I want.

A few things I've remembered, but that's it. I don't know how or why I was acting 'out of character', and I don't know why it is that so many people around here shield their thoughts on reflex when I'm around or why it's suddenly become standard practice never to travel alone and unarmed. I've been getting so many scornful, distrustful looks around here since my release from the infirmary, but I have no idea what I've done to deserve them.

"And do you know what it was that makes all of that all so much more difficult to bear, so much more … upsetting?"

Jaina didn't respond.

"It was the complete and total lack of wanting anything to do with me. That frame of mind from someone I'd considered myself to be very close to after spending so much time with you. That frame of mind in my own _sister_. How do you expect me to react to you coming in here and right away snapping at me for exercising one of my rights—a right which you yourself _chose _to let me have, after so long of not wanting to even _look_ at me?"

"Zak—" Jaina made to approach him, reaching out, but Zak held his hand up to stop her and took a step back away from her in reflex.

"Don't."

She dropped her hand back to her side and looked down at the deck again, unable to look him in the eye.

Zak remembered what Luke had told him earlier that day; that Jaina, as a woman, would take a little longer to forgive him for whatever he had done than most people would. That Tash too would take her time to come around.

But they were the closest people to him in the galaxy at the moment, and he had expected them to at least _ask_ about him, which he knew that neither of them had.

He didn't feel angry about it either. All of the anger he'd experienced from the memory, and the initial indignation of Jaina's attitude, was gone. All he felt was disappointment and perhaps a little discomforted by the fact.

That Jacen had told him he had had a profound effect on Jaina only made his discomfort worse, only made his distaste for himself that much more pronounced.

Zak sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose as the hint of his headaches started to creep back upon him. "But I'm making an effort," he said after a few minutes of silence in which he watched as she maintained her gaze at the deck. "You wanted to speak with me and instead of running away from that, I'm perfectly willing to stand around and listen to whatever it is you have to say. So, by all means, speak."

She looked up at him, and Zak realised just how much she was holding back from lashing out at him. She pointed to the chair he had been seated on before his memory had surfaced.

"Sit," she said, making it sound like an order from the Queen Mother of Hapes.

Zak sat down without a word. He was determined that whatever he had done to her had to be undone, and doing as she asked of him now would help in currying favour.

Jaina's lips twitched into the beginnings of a smile, and Zak knew that she had read that thought from him, but again he made no effort to shield himself, and he certainly didn't return the smile.

"So really; no one's told you what happened?" she asked him. "No one's told you of the misdemeanours you committed while you were … incapacitated?"

Misdemeanours?

The memories had just started to paint an already disturbing picture for him on how he'd been acting, but when Jaina described it as a _misdemeanour_, it just made it sound so much worse. He was starting to understand the nature in which he'd acted out of character.

Had he hurt someone? Had he killed again? Again, the word that Luke Skywalker had used to describe his actions echoed in his thoughts—_malicious_.

"No," Zak said, shaking his head. "Luke and Jacen have … _hinted_ that it wasn't good, and what memories I have been able to access have been clouded in feelings associated with rage and hatred."

"So you've had to draw your own conclusions," Jaina finished with a nod. "What memories _have_ you had?"

"Just now of me murdering Darth Pravus on Coruscant," Zak said, clenching both of his hands tightly at the memory.

Even though it had happened so long ago, he could still smell the acrid stench of burning flesh and he'd scorched every inch of it from Pravus's bones on Coruscant. He could barely stomach knowing he'd done it, no matter how cruel the man had been to them.

"What about this morning, in the Audience Chamber?" Jaina asked.

"Does _everyone_ know about that?" Zak asked indignantly.

"Bit hard not to," Jaina pointed out with a shrug.

Zak sighed. "They were just flashes. I was fighting someone up there. It was dark. I could only see the lightsabers; mine and someone else's—a green one and a blue one. I thought maybe one of them was Master Skywalker."

"Jacen," Jaina said calmly, "and Anakin."

"Jacen? Anakin?" Zak exclaimed. "Why?"

"You didn't see?" Jaina asked him.

Zak shook his head and allowed her to probe his recent memory of that memory. "Like I said, they were just flashes. All I saw were the lightsabers and the movements. I didn't even see that it was your brothers."

"Ah. Well, I think it best you come to that realisation yourself then."

"Jaina—"

"No arguments about it, Zak," Jaina said sternly. "If Uncle Luke wants you to discover these memories on your own then he must have good reason for it. I believe that personal discovery provides perspective. None of us know what was going through your head at the time, and only you will be able to discover that. Now that you … seem to have recovered completely from it, you'll be able to observe those events objectively."

"Perspective?" Zak said dubiously. "What perspective? I was attacking people. What kind of perspective is there to find?"

"None of us knows exactly why you were acting that way, Zak," Jaina reminded him icily. "Discovering those memories on your own might help _you_ find out why."

"And what if I don't like what I find?" Zak asked her.

"That's what the rest of us are for, Zak; to console you," Jaina offered, taking a tentative step forward.

"So now you have no problem in being around me?" Zak said testily.

"Zak, you can be such a barve sometimes," Jaina said. "I'm trying to say that I'm sorry for—"

"Then just say it, rather than jinking around it."

Jaina frowned, and Zak kept his expression neutral, waiting for her to respond.

He could hear the thudding of her heart, could feel the thoughts racing around in her mind as she considered the words best to use. He didn't really need an apology from her. In fact, he didn't want one; Jaina hadn't really done anything wrong.

What he really wanted was to know that everything between them was going to be OK, and that _she_ would forgive _him_ for whatever it was that he had done to her.

"I'm sorry," she said, her lips pressed together tightly as if she had had to fight her pride to get the words out. Knowing her, that was probably exactly what she was doing.

Zak nodded. He really wanted to ask her for more details, for things that Luke and Jacen were both keeping from him, but when she sensed that in him, he felt her walls start to go up, signalling that she wouldn't cooperate and that she would stubbornly insist that his memories be recovered on his own.

It annoyed him somewhat, that no one was willing to help him.

"I never said I wouldn't help you with your memory recovery," Jaina said in response to his thought. "I'll be there with you as you start to remember things, but I just think that no one should _tell_ you what happened. It would lack the proper context and the right perspective unique to you."

"Pssh! Perspective," Zak mumbled. "It's just …"

"Frustrating?" Jaina offered. Zak nodded and she crossed the remainder of the distance and reached out to touch his face. "I know."

"How could you? You're not the one that has to deal with it." Zak frowned again. "You're not the one who knows you've done something wrong and aren't able to remember what it was."

"The bond between us works more than just as a telepathic link, Zak," she responded softly. "I feel all the torment and anguish and frustration you're feeling now. It's an empathic bond as well as a telepathic one."

"How …?" Zak began.

"I discovered it by accident," Jaina explained, taking one of his hands in her free hand and clasping it tightly. "I wanted to know what was going through your mind when you were out there alone, keeping away from the rest of us, but you'd completely locked even me out, and so with enough concentration I was able to tap into your emotions instead."

"Am I able to do the same?"

An uneasy look brushed across the young woman's face and Zak instantly regretted asking. "I suppose," she said with a shrug. "Given time and concentration you might be able to. I can help you with it. Now, I think, is not the right time for it, though."

"Yeah; not when your uncle is overloading me with _more_ private lessons."

"More? I thought you were doing OK with the visions?"

Jaina was one of the very few people he'd told about that. The others being Tash, Jacen and—under duress—Darth Pravus. Luke had probably told his wife, but to the best of Zak's knowledge, that's how far it went.

"I think I am. But you saw what just happened when I was caught up in one of my memories," he pointed out. "He thinks I should get control of those outbursts before the inevitable arrival of the Republic oversight delegation."

"Smart man, Uncle Luke," Jaina said with a grin.

Zak determined from that that Jaina knew something that he didn't, but he left it alone.

"Have you had a look around yet?" he asked.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

_**LANNIK STAR SYSTEM**_

Light-years from the Yavin system, a trio of Imperial II Star Destroyers had taken up intimidating station in the Lannik system.

A peaceful world that had, thus far, not joined the New Republic, Lannik was of no particular interest to many of the governments in the galaxy. It was located just outside of Hutt space in the Mid-Rim of the galaxy, and was commonly regarded by the galaxy's seedier elements as a safe harbour from persecution.

But for those who were interested in conflict with the New Republic, Lannik was close enough to the Wookiees' home system that it would draw Republic forces there to protect their allies. Also, occupying Lannik gave access to all of the prohibited cargo being ferried through the system into and out of Hutt space, and a lot of that cargo could be used, while the rest could be ransomed off.

A fourth ship approached the planet, gargantuan in comparison to the Imperial IIs, and slowing as it approached.

* * *

_**SECOND IMPERIUM FLAGSHIP, CONQUERER-CLASS: **_**FURY OF PALPATINE**_**; APPROACHING LANNIK**_

Far to the rear of the command deck aboard the flagship of the Second Imperium's growing navy, the largest starship by far and much larger than even an Executor-class Super Star Destroyer, the middle of five lift tubes opened up and a woman stepped out.

The woman stopped and looked around the special operations compartment at the rear of the bridge, separated by a thick glass divider that slid open from the middle. The port and starboard walls of the room were lined with console stations, each with an officer or crewman stationed behind it doing their duty. A senior officer was standing behind one such officer, receiving a report.

Frowning, she started forward towards the glass wall and waved her hand at the controls on the wall. The dividers parted, allowing her unhindered entry onto the main bridge of her ship, and she strode down the central walk to the front of the deck with quick, even strides.

The woman had a slim physique, hidden under billowing black robes, with long dark hair hanging in light curls around her shoulders. Her dark eyes, contaminated by the disturbing yellow of someone that had given themselves entirely to the dark side of the Force, were locked ahead of her path, not once glancing down around her at the officers and crewmen on either side of the walk, working at or rushing between stations on the lowered deck.

They had all gone suddenly quiet with her presence, talking in hushed voices only if they had to speak at all.

Her raised-heel boots clacked noisily against the panelled walk until she came to a stop a couple of meters from the wraparound transparisteel viewports and the durasteel bracing. She stared out, circling slowly around to the port side of the deck, at the bulk of the ship laid out ahead of the command module.

The planet below, tinged in greens and oranges and yellows, was nothing of importance to her. There were other planets she could get the materials she needed for her fleet. But it was another in a long line of unprovoked assaults by her forces on unguarded and seemingly worthless planets in an attempt to force the New Republic to stretch their border forces to the point where invasion would be feasible.

So far, most of the systems she had attacked served mainly to expand the Imperium's territory as well as taunt its enemies, and most of the worlds had possessed nothing of importance or value to the Republic to warrant a defence or recapture.

The woman was surprised that they had left Elom unguarded when it was the main source of Lommite, a mineral used in the forging of durasteel and transparisteel for building and starship construction, available to the Republic. The third fleet had taken that system days ago, and the Republic hadn't made a move to retaliate.

But the woman was present personally at Lannik for one reason: to demonstrate the awesome might of the flagship of the Imperium's fleet. For it was only a new ship, the new pride of the Imperium's fleet.

The ship was of an entirely new design, and as yet only the first of three stages of its construction had been finished. When completed, it would be more powerful than even the second Death Star her father had had built. And it would be the only one of its kind … _ever_.

Thus far, her ship was of the stereotypical arrowhead design with a score of ion engines to the rear and a sternward-mounted command module attached by a short thick neck. Four fusion generator domes lined the top of the command module in a semi-circular pattern around a series of communications and sensor antennae.

Turbolasers and laser cannon batteries lined the top, sides and underside of the hull and in the centre point on the topside of the hull was the massive opening hatch for the fighter bays.

It was easily twice the length of the _Executor_, the flagship of the first Galactic Empire. When the ship was completed, it would have triple its present bulk, triple the fighter capacity, triple the firepower and triple the shield capability.

A ship possessive of the power that this one did was deserving of a name that would mirror that power, demand the warranted respect and make the weak tremble at the mere whisper of its existence.

The woman knew the exact name that would fit, for there could be nothing more fear-inspiring. She named the ship _Fury of Palpatine_.

The woman's name was Alitha. She was, of course, one of many illegitimate offspring of the great Emperor, and the only one left living. She had seen to that personally. Most of her siblings she had tracked down had been model citizens of the New Republic, hissing and spitting at the merest mention of the Empire and its attempted replacements. A few of those had even been raised by members of the Rebel Alliance during its struggle to topple the great Galactic Empire

Not one of them had had any idea who their real father was, had known the potential within them. It hasn't been difficult for Alitha to dispatch them, and she didn't once take the time to tell them who she was, or how she was connected to them, before she struck them down.

For years, she had considered herself the sole rightful heir to the throne of the Imperial Remnant, and she'd had plans to make it strong again and challenge the Republic for control of the galaxy. But those plans had been thrown into the disposal unit, so to speak, when Admiral Pallaeon the rest of the Remnant traitors had defected and joined the New Republic.

So, instead, she'd gathered the remaining loyalists and formed the Second Imperium, laying in secret herself while allowing her Inquisitors to take the credit for its formation, and its apparent destruction.

There were no more sons, no more daughters of Palpatine that had right to challenge her, and there was no Dark Jedi or Sith-aspirants that possessed the power to try it. Her grasp of the dark side of the Force was so strong that she felt her father might have even been genuinely proud of her. It was this connection to the dark side that caused all of those within the Imperium to fall so deathly silent within her presence. They were all afraid of the power she wielded, afraid of what she would do to them should they displease her.

And why shouldn't they be. She'd never dared give them a reason to hope there was a chance to resist her.

When anyone within the fleet displeased her personally, she executed them personally, and made it as public as possible amongst the Imperium so as to incite fear amongst her subordinates, to ensure loyalty.

Recently, she'd had to execute three starship captains.

Because of their arrogant superior attitudes, they had failed to set up the communications blocks quickly enough in their assault on a planet in the outer rim and its residents had gotten word to their neighbours.

Alitha was broken from her thoughts by the hissing of a turbolift at the far end of the bridge, where she had come from moments ago. She heard it through the soundproof transparisteel only because of her command of the Force.

Calm and steady footsteps echoed across the bridge after the sound of the lift snapping shut again, approaching her with even strides. The sound the boots made against the deck plates was light and less noisy than her own had been, meaning that it was not the girl that approached, but a member of the ship's crew.

She forced her way into the approaching mind to determine their identity and met a little defiant resistance and a disapproving mood. Only one non-Force-user ever had the gall to be in such a mood towards her, and knew how to set up even an amateur mental defence against her: Grand Admiral Sebeka Farran.

Alitha paced casually back to the centre of the viewport and waited until the sound of the boots stopped a couple of feet behind her and the officer stood at attention, not making a sound as she waited to be addressed by her superior.

She ignored her for a moment, allowing her gaze to drift along the sleek hull of the ship to a nearby active TIE patrol that was passing by the viewport port-to-starboard. The Imperial II Star Destroyer _Medusa_ was poised not too far away, its forward point in the direction of Lannik as if ready to spear the disgustingly pastel-coloured world.

Ordinarily, the _Medusa_ and its sister ship, _Punisher_—which was on the far side of Lannik in a mirroring position to the former—would be with the third and fifth fleets stationed at the Vergesso and Pzob systems respectively. However, as both ships were flagships of those two fleets—the most successful within the Imperium—they had been chosen to accompany her on this demonstration.

"Yes, Admiral?" she said eventually, finally granting the Grand Admiral the audience that she so desperately waited for. She did not turn to face the officer.

"Your Highness," the admiral replied brusquely. "You requested that I have the report on the region's military capacity ready to present to you at this time." It was a statement of fact, and Alitha closed her eyes in a private nod of ascent.

"You are five minutes early, Admiral," she corrected. She didn't intend it as a demerit, however, more as a praise … as much of one as she was ever likely to give anyone that wasn't the girl.

"Yes, My Lady," Farran replied, sounding mildly apologetic.

Alitha allowed the smallest of smiles to touch her lips before she retained her neutrally fearsome demeanour.

She still did not turn to face the officer, nor did she say anything further. She inclined her head briefly to the side as an indication that she was ready to hear the report.

"As intelligence predicted would be the case, Lannik itself is completely defenceless without so much as a communications satellite in orbit," Farran began. "The Rep—"

Alitha hissed at the amount of gall the admiral did indeed have; saying the name of their adversary aloud. It was not something she had permitted on ships or installations she and the girl were on for the past two years. The girl needed to be manipulated in a very special and very delicate manner, if she was going to replace Darth Pravus as her new apprentice.

"The _Rebels_," Farran corrected herself, "have not established a forward guard station at all in the system, nor have they dispatched reinforcements to offer even limited planetary defence capability after the last few attacks we have made."

"That is because they think they know how we will act. They think, Admiral, that they can predict our next moves. It will be their undoing to assume that we will play fair by adhering to _their_ articles of war. In war, there are no rules; there are no innocent worlds, no defenceless worlds." Alitha turned to the side now, her eyes watching the Admiral from the periphery.

"Yes, Highness," Farran said, bowing her head. "As anticipated, our communications blocks went up the second we left hyperspace. Lannik has been cut off from subspace communications and cannot call for assistance."

"It's only a stopgap. A delay tactic, at best. We are on the edge of Hutt territory. Our presence won't go unnoticed indefinitely, and eventually the Hutts will want to demand the reason for our being here. Assuming they don't take kindly to our reasoning, they may alert others to our movements. Notably: the Rebels."

"Of course."

There was silence again, perforated only by the sounds of the bridge crew going about their normal duties without speaking or murmuring or whispering. None of them paid any mind to the conversation on the upper landing. When the admiral could no longer stand the silence, her hands unclasped from behind her back and she brought them to the front, handing Alitha a sheet of flimsi.

"What is this?" she asked, not bothering to read the admiral's mind.

"Tactical information on the nearby systems," Farran said without making eye contact with the dark-robed figure. "The nearest Rebel fleet is across the other side of Hutt space at Kessel, and will have to circumnavigate the Hutts to get to us, unless they want to cause an incident."

"You have the Corellian system highlighted, Admiral," Alitha pointed out, bemused. "Care to explain why?"

"The Corellians pose perhaps the biggest threat to our presence here," Farran said.

"The Corellian Run hyperspace lane."

"Yes, My Lady," Farran said. "That particular lane runs down through Druckenwell to Ryloth. It's only a short jump from Ryloth to the Alzoc star system, and if the Rebels decide to take advantage of that …"

"They'd have to know that's where we're spreading from, Admiral. The point of our particular non-pattern of territorial acquisition is so they wouldn't be able to pinpoint Alzoc as our point of origin unless they've got spies within the Imperium. But I see your point."

Farran swallowed as she waited for the other to read the rest of the report. Alitha thumbed through the reports on the flimsi, but did not look down at them. She skimmed the contents with her mind as she took inventory of the admiral with her gaze.

Farran was in her late forties, with mostly orange hair that was long and wrapped up in a bun behind her head, greying along the temples with age. Stress lines beginning to form around her eyes and at the corners of her mouth. She bore no visible scars, though Alitha knew for a fact that there were some impressive old gash marks along her upper back and left side from mishaps during her days in her father's Empire as a fighter pilot.

She could not understand why, when bacta was by no means in short supply, many of her subordinates cherished their scars. Even Darth Pravus had opted away from aggressive bacta treatment to remove the burn scars from his face and hand that had been caused by the digestive acids of the Sarlacc that had almost eaten him, and the lightsaber wound to the jaw and neck from Skywalker.

Farran was well built for a woman, but not overly large. And she gave off an aura of strength and confidence and unity that exuded from her like perfume. It was intoxicating to the crew around her, who found themselves always willing to do whatever she commanded of them. If Alitha didn't know better, she'd have said that it was a passive Force ability. But it was that strength and confidence present in the admiral that had led Alitha to believe that she was the right person to take command of her prize fleet, and the flagship of the Imperium.

Tactically, she could be called the closest thing to Grand Admiral Thrawn ever seen. While she lacked the subtleties of his genius, which Alitha could only have wished to experience herself, Farran did indeed follow with Thrawn's idea that one could devise the tactics of one's enemies simply by viewing the works of art that they as a culture were responsible for.

Alitha could never understand that logic herself—especially considering with her ability to read minds she didn't _have_ to understand it—but it seemed that Farran did to a point, and so far her track record was close to perfection.

The white uniform of her rank of Grand Admiral was tailored perfectly to her form and there were several lines of merits as well as her rank insignia and a pair of medals that Alitha herself had personally bestowed upon her pinned to the uniform over her left breast. The gold fabric of the shoulder pads and braided aiguillettes gleamed in the bridge lights, almost shining, and the black gloves and belt with the silver buckle were all polished and perfect.

Alitha's eyes flickered down to the report as it came to a close and she handed the flimsi back with a bored sigh.

Not much more than she had expected. Farran's plan was working well thus far and they were ready to proceed to the next step.

She turned again to gaze out through the wraparound viewport and closed her eyes as she reach out her mind to touch the minds of the pilots on defence patrol and the commanders of the other two destroyers, giving them their next set of orders.

"I know that you are loathe to take guesses, Admiral," she started, her eyes still shut though she had finished her silent communication, "but when do you think the Rebels are likely to notice our brazen advancement along their borders and take action?"

The admiral's hesitation was enough of a hint to emphasise her dislike at taking guesses, and it brought a sly smile to Alitha's lips.

"As you yourself have stated, so far we've only advanced _along_ their border, and not yet across it. The Rebel leadership is likely to vote that we're _not_ a threat until we decide to take aggressive action into their space. None of the systems bolsters our shipbuilding efforts in any measureable way, and so the only way for them to take it is as a taunting move."

"Which is exactly what it is," Alitha reminded her.

She sensed the woman behind her nod. "But our current position here provides us with a strategic advantage they rather we didn't have."

"Tell me anyway," Alitha urged the woman, hearing _"Which you already know"_ in the admiral's mind.

"From Lannik, we have a jumping point into the core of Hutt space to annex their fleets, should we choose to," Farran said. "And when the shipyards at Pzob and Tatooine are completed, Lannik will have extra source of defence while being able to support any invasion into Mimban, Kashyyyk, or even the Core."

"Very good, Admiral. Go on."

"Though Tatooine was an unclaimed world, it could be seen to have been intended as a morale blow to the Rebels. Luke Skywalker's involvement with the first Rebellion started when Vader chased a Rebel cruiser into the system. Skywalker may take it as a blow against him personally, a show that we challenge him to defy us."

"Nevertheless," Alitha started, "our next move is going to attract attention."

"The Hutts, My Lady?"

"The Hutts. They may plead with the Rebels for help in driving us out—if they can even get a representative out to make said plea—but I doubt the Rebels will get involved. The Hutts refused to join their Rebellion the first time, and again many times since. They are viewed as untrustworthy and undeserving, as far as many are concerned."

"The Hutts do have a formidable defence of Nal Hutta and Toydaria.

"Admiral Farran, when you first brought this plan to me, I foresaw that outcome. As such, I had the fourth fleet from Ando reassigned to Cularin and the eighth and ninth fleets from Ryloth and Geonosis respectively moved to the sector of Wild Space beyond the Barab system."

"And the advance stealth detachment? The Interdictors? We're going to need both if we plan to make a run for the Hutt capital."

"Three Interdictors from the company at Alzoc are being temporarily reassigned to the fourth fleet at Cularin for this operation," Alitha told her as they passed between the glass dividers back into the comm. section of the bridge. "The commander of the second fleet is _lending_ us his stealth detachment for as long as we require it. They're at Zhar maintaining the transition, and have no present need for it."

"And the _Fury_?"

"The _Fury of Palpatine_ will still be involved in the assault on the Hutts, Admiral. Make no mistake. In fact, I intend to be the tip of the spear we use to destroy Nal Hutta's defence forces and smash the sector into submission."

"Very good, Highness."

They stood in silence, waiting for the lifts, for several moments before Alitha spoke again. "Where is she?" she asked.

"Her quarters, I believe. Since you instructed her not to leave until summoned by you, she took the time to … erm … meditate in your absence."

Alitha nodded. That was very good. With luck, she would already know what her next mission was before Alitha gave it to her.

"I want her sent to my sanctum immediately. I have a very special mission in store for her that could benefit the Imperium's plans to shatter the Jedi's willingness to support their Rebel allies once and for all."

Farran nodded and watched as her sovereign stepped into the open lift and disappeared behind its closing doors.


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

_**JEDI PRAXEUM; YAVIN 4**_

A month later and Zak had, for the most part, repaired his friendship with Jaina. Though, there were still things that she just refused to divulge, mostly to do with his memories which he found were becoming less and less difficult to access. He had not made the same progress with his sister, however, and the most he had gotten from her thus far was a reluctant hello when he had passed her in the hall on his way to lunch with Jaina.

The two of them spent most of their time together on the _Silent Hunter_ in the secret underground hangar bay, discussing ways they could modify the ship for their own use, and conferring with their friends on ideas that they had.

No sooner had this started than they had gotten to work on it as a project. Now that the Sentinel had been completely repaired, completely patched and rewired, and they had a month on their hands to use, they found themselves eager to work on the new ship—especially since Zak had lifted the lockdown.

Most of the ship's systems were fine, they found, and Zak and Jaina were happy to leave them as they were. But the life support system wasn't quite right for them, as it left the ship feeling just a little to chilled, and the sensor nodes and weapons pods had to be replaced with Republic-issue replacements that, if they didn't have conveniently lying around, Lando assured them that he could have some shipped in at a fairly cheap cost.

Jacen steered well clear of the technical side of the ship's upgrades and had instead busied himself on the craftsman side of it.

He'd stripped down the steel frames of the bed from the main cabin and the cots from the other three, as well as the bedside tables and wardrobes from each. Then, he proceeded to make replacements from the wood of felled Massassi trees from the jungles, which he assured Zak was strong.

His finishing touches had been unique patterns carved into each bed frame, with matching carvings along the edges and legs of the bedside tables and the sides and fronts of each of the wardrobes. It was an incredibly personal touch for which Jaina had given him the biggest hug ever bestowed by a sibling that Zak had ever witnessed. Then all of them had gotten together and painted the outer hull of the ship as dark as they could get it.

Finished, they took some time away in which Zak agreed to increase his private sessions with Luke in a desperate bid to access new memories.

The memories he had accessed by the end of the month were frightening to him. He knew now why those around him were fearful and distrusting of him.

In that time he had been acting strangely, he had declared himself Lord of the Sith, succeeding Pravus in both title and power. Though he did not receive the memories in any specific order, he knew that this behaviour had gone on for a couple of weeks, and that Luke and the other mentors had wanted to keep knowledge of it from reaching the Senate and the Council, for they hoped that Zak could still be saved.

He had at one point objected to going further, insisting to Luke that what he had seen would be enough to gauge how bad things had gotten. But, as Skywalker had pointed out, the memories would not just leave him entirely because he didn't want them there.

His training with Luke to control his memory-to-physical outbursts was necessary still to prevent further incidents. In the end, Zak had conceded to his judgement and they'd continued the next day, forcibly drawing up memories Zak had already experienced.

Zak found the training to be both mentally and physically draining to him, in comparison to the training he had started a year ago to help him control when his visions could penetrate his conscious mind.

In those lessons, he had to delve deep into the magics of the Force to set up barriers to block the visions from his consciousness. It was as far as he had gotten before the year-long interruption to the schedule, but Zak had reasoned that after he had perfected that, Luke would then take him to the next step which involved consciously lowering that barrier little bit by little bit.

But learning now to restrain his outbursts was taxing in every respect, and often tired him quickly. Not only did he have to dredge up the memory, but he had to envelop himself in the Force to enough of a degree that he could monitor the memory from an outsider-like viewpoint, as well as what reaction his body was undertaking in the real world at the same time. Then he had to physically restrain whatever it was that he would have otherwise done.

But he was a quick learner, he knew.

His first couple of lessons with Skywalker were failures, resulting in himself atop his teacher in a position ready to strike him or otherwise harm him. But his teacher was never mad with him, and always allowed him to see the truth of that in his mind when he doubted it.

He meditated before sleeping at the end of each night, and soon improvement was evident.

While inadvertently re-experiencing the memory of his murdering Darth Pravus on Coruscant, he felt his hand rise up from his side, his fingers outstretched in the direction of the elder Jedi. Force energies built up, a ball of crackling white and blue soon visible in the palm of his hand, shooting white-hot arcs of electric fire up to the tips of his fingers. He felt the hot burn of the electricity searing his skin, but could not stop himself.

No matter how hard he tried, he just could not pull himself from the memory entirely, nor could he stop or drain the build up in his hand. At the last second, before he'd struck out at his teacher, he managed to physically affect it, forcing his hand aside and blasting a chunk out of the wall, spraying them both with chunks of stone and ferrocrete reinforce.

Luke's response had been calm, jovial even, stating "That's OK. I never really liked that wall anyway" and the session ended for the day.

Zak kept Jaina and Jacen apprised of his progress, as they came to visit him frequently to see how he was and to find out the progress of his memory retrieval.

Like his older brother, Anakin Solo had not held any ill will against Zak because of what had happened, but he had been forbidden by Jaina from visiting Zak in the infirmary, for what she believed at the time to be his own safety.

Now, at the end of that month, he found himself unwarrantedly distracted.

There were still a few days before the Republic representatives arrived, but GemDiver's deep space sensor satellites in the Yavin system had picked up an approaching ship.

The ship, which was due to arrive some time that day, had as yet not broadcast its identity beacon to define it as friend or foe, nor had they attempted any sort of communication. Lando had handed the matter over to Luke, who put Striker Squadron on alert, ready to launch prior to the ship leaving hyperspace.

Zak and Jaina were in the Encrypted Communications office on the third floor, the door currently locked as less than ten minutes later, Mara Jade Skywalker had entered the regular Communications office behind them. Both of them withdrew their presences in the Force as close to their physical selves as they could, knowing that if the elder sensed them there, she would more than likely demand their immediate departure and they wouldn't find out directly what was going on.

A humming started to permeate the door, just barely, as the holoscreen was switched on. "Identify yourself?" Mara's stern tone came through the door.

They waited patiently for the response, and it soon came. "_I have come in search of a great Jedi Knight by the name of Zak Arranda,_" a female's voice replied. Zak gauged from the tone and cadence that she could be no older than her mid-teens.

Zak bristled. _Jedi Knight_? He was still only a student! Not even a Padawan! He looked to Jaina, whose face was filled with the same confusion he guessed she saw on his face.

_Jedi Knight_, she mouthed silently. _Since when?_

Zak fought the chuckle bubbling up his throat. He couldn't give away his proximity to Mara or she would no doubt be cross with them both; especially Jaina who had been at the Praxeum much longer and no doubt knew better.

On top of that, Zak had found out recently, for it had never been mentioned in their time together before escaping Pravus's clutches, that Jaina was Mara Jade Skywalker's Padawan apprentice. As such, Mara would be sterner with her than with Zak

"Zak Arranda is no Jedi Knight," Mara replied evenly. Zak couldn't have bet on it, but he could swear that there had been the hint of a smile in her tone. Perhaps she found the mistake as amusing as he and Jaina did. "He is only a student."

"_Is_ _that a confirmation that Zak is indeed here?_" the younger woman asked.

Mara hesitated. "Who, I ask again, wants to know?"

"_My name is Allina,_" the other replied.

Zak frowned. The girl's name was almost familiar to him, though he couldn't peg how he knew it at this moment.

There was a longer pause in which neither woman spoke a word. "_May I land?_" the younger girl continued, breaking the silence. "_I have been travelling far and I barely have enough fuel to make the landing, and definitely will not be able to maintain even a single orbit around the moon._"

_Do you think she'll go for it?_ Zak heard Jaina whisper into his mind.

_You know her better than I do,_ he reminded her.

"The landing pad outside the complex is free for your use. Upon landing I would request you disarm yourself," Mara said briskly.

"_Understood. Locking in the landing cycle._"

And then there was static as the communication was silenced and the holocomm switched off.

_Now what?_ Jaina whispered to him over their private link again.

Her question was answered when the lock clicked and the door opened to reveal Mara, standing there in her aqua-green tunic with black leather belt and brown leather shoulder guards—which were sewn into the tunic. She looked from one to the other, her hands on her hips and her eyebrows furrowed into a disapproving frown.

Zak saw that what joviality she may have experienced at the thought of Zak being a fully-fledged Jedi Knight was extinguished, replaced by the look he saw now. Though his experience with the family was limited to Luke, he thought that such a look was unbefitting a Skywalker.

"None of the rest of us may be able to tell what the two of you are saying to each other across that psychic channel of yours, but we can still sense when it's being used. And pray tell what the two of you were doing back here with the door locked," she said sternly, the disapproval coming in thick. "I shudder to think what your parents would think if I were ever to mention it like that to them. I'd wager your father would be … disapproving."

"I'm sorry, Aunt Mara," Jaina said, bowing her head. "When we heard, we were curious about whom it could have been, and when we sensed you heading this way yourself we hid in here under the assumption that you were going to talk to them."

"I am very disappointed in you Jaina," Mara said, still frowning. Zak sidestepped out of her gaze, hoping to get away from her scorn. "Don't think you're entirely innocent of this yourself young man. I should have words with Luke about this, and let him discipline you for it accordingly. Both of you."

"Sorry," Zak said meekly.

Mara sighed and rolled her eyes before she looked at Zak, the frown gone. Her hands dropped from her hips and instead disappeared behind her back, where Zak sensed that they clasped in place. She stood there for a moment, appraising him as he read the questions forming in her mind; questions that she had no intention of asking while Jaina was present.

"Why don't you go back down to the hangar and get some more work done on the _Silent Hunter_?" she suggested. "Assuming there's anything left to do. For this instance, I will let you off the hook, Zak. You, however Jaina, I think not. Strikers nine and eleven need their stabilisers rechecked and their engine manifolds purged. I want it done by dinner, and I want _you_ to do it—no suckering one of the astro droids into it for you. Understood?"

"Oh, great," Jaina said sarcastically. Again Zak fought not to laugh. "Sure thing," she added with faked cheerfulness. "Come on Zak."

She clasped his hand tightly and tugged.

* * *

"Somehow I know that name," Zak insisted as he and Jacen walked down the corridor on the third level a couple of hours later.

Jaina had gone back to the _Silent Hunter_ a while ago without him, and used her comlink to request that Lowbacca head down there as well to join her. Though Zak knew that there was no actual work to be done yet, he sensed in her the desire to add another improvement to the ship.

Though she deliberately shielded those thoughts from him, he knew he could find out without trying. He did, however, put all his effort into not trying.

Meanwhile, he was letting his curiosity get the better of him, and he hadn't yet told his friend Jacen, which was why he walked beside him just now.

At this point, everyone in the building knew about the incoming ship, but most of the residents were minding their own business. Most of them had been students of the Jedi way longer than Zak had been. His curiosity would always get the better of him, especially when he was somehow involved.

"Maybe it's just a common name," Jacen offered. They turned left at the end and rounded the wall before ducking through the door into Zak's bedroom. "Allina sounds pretty like a pretty common name to me. Personally I think Allana sounds better, but beggars can't be choosers."

"Nah, it's not that," Zak said, thinking. He dumped his robe onto his bed, having taken it off earlier and carried it around with him since as the day began to get warmer. "It's … it's … it's …"

"It's what?"

"Oh, I don't know," Zak said impatiently. He glanced at his lightsaber, resting on his bedside table. "That wasn't there this morning," he said, reaching out and picking it up.

The last time he could remember holding it was when he and Jaina had been running through the halls of Darth Pravus's space station on their way to a hangar deck—unless of course he counted his resurgent memories.

It felt different now than it had then, and it directed Zak's thoughts to the memory of what Jaina had told him had been him and Jacen duelling viciously in the Grand Audience Chamber.

Jacen bristled beside him and directed the topic elsewhere before Zak could open his mouth to ask. "Uncle Luke thought it was time that you had it back. He thought that you might want to … alter it a little."

Zak also spotted a small metal box next to where the lightsaber had sat and he flicked the lid open to see a set of four raw, clear crystals held in place by small tin clamps. He brushed his fingers gently over them and knew what they were. Looking back down at the lightsaber in his hand, he clicked on one of the deadly blades and watched as a red-white stream of plasma was ignited.

"He was right. Red isn't my colour," Zak said, scrunching up his nose in distaste. "But these …"

"Jaina's idea, evidently," Jacen said, grinning. "She thought she would challenge you by having Uncle Luke provide you with raw synth crystals to see if you could refine them to your lightsaber's needs. There are extras in case you … erm … fail to succeed the first time around."

"Oh, how very like Jaina to do something like this," Zak said, narrowing his eyes in feigned annoyance. "Challenge me to doing something I've never done before to see if I _can _do it. I sense she even delivered them herself. She can be quite the tease."

"Tell me about it," Jacen grumbled. Zak deactivated his lightsaber and set it back down on the table gently. "It's a little … hmm … mismatched?" he said absently.

Zak frowned; he had just been about to try again to ask Jacen about what Jaina had told him. "Yeah, I know. The only metal I had access to was scrap pieces from combat droids Jaina and I were destroying." he responded instead.

"Are you going to do a complete rebuild?"

Zak nodded. "I most certainly am. I didn't have much choice when I first made it, and I'm glad that I did a decent enough job of it that it didn't short out or overload or something when I tried to use it. But I'm not happy with it. I'll probably keep the same design, though—just replace all of the parts with … well … new parts."

"If you need any help …" Jacen offered, and Zak nodded to say that he appreciated it.

"Let's go," he said, leading the way back out of his room and over to the lift tubes up to the fourth level.

"Where to?"

"Our guest will have been escorted into the building by now. My guess is that she's upstairs talking to Luke," Zak said cheerfully. "I want to know why she's here looking for me."

"Didn't Aunt Mara reprimand you earlier for being nosy?" Jacen asked. Zak sensed uncertainty in him.

"That's going to stop me?" Zak said rhetorically. "If this person wants me, for whatever reason, I'm going to find out why and I have to find out just who she is. That name of hers is gnawing at the back of my mind like a starving wamp rat."

Jacen sighed. "If you insist." He turned to go and Zak knew that he wouldn't be able to convince his friend to participate in the illicit investigating, and so he didn't try to do so.

"Uh … Jacen," Zak called out before Jacen stepped around the corner of his room and out of sight.

Jacen stopped, gave him a sarcastic eyebrows-raised look. "No. You find out the reason for that on your own. But I will say this; yourself or not you do fight well."

And then he was out of sight.

Zak's shoulders slumped and he allowed himself to search for the memory while he waited for one of the lifts to arrive for him. Unfortunately for him, he saw no more this time than he had previous times so far, and the lift's arrival distracted him from trying. He stepped into it and ascended to the next level and departed it.

Luke Skywalker's office was on the right of the level's foyer-type area and Zak walked over to it with careful steps, taking each one slowly and placing his feet fully so as to avoid making a sound.

Before stepping out of the lift, Zak had once more withdrawn his presence in the Force to as skin-close as possible to hide from Luke, who he had no doubt would reprimand him much as his wife had done earlier.

He reached the door and crouched down under the glass window set into it at head height; he pressed his ear against the wood.

Through the wooden door, he could hear two sets of muffled voices, one elderly and male and recognisable as Luke Skywalker's and the other youthful and female—the voice of the girl that had spoken with Mara.

It was the girl he heard speaking first. "Nobody has as yet actually confirmed that Zak is even here. There is no point in my staying if he is not. I should continue my search. Will you at least tell me he's not here so I can be on my way, or in lieu of that tell me he _is_ here and bring me to him?"

Wow, Zak thought to himself. The girl had guts if she thought she could just waltz in to a Jedi academy and start making demands of the Grand Master himself.

"If you were to leave now, how far would you get on your ship's exhaust fumes before you ran out altogether and were left drifting through space, helpless?" Luke Skywalker countered politely. Zak smiled.

He'd seen her ship squatting down on the landing pad down below earlier before deciding that he was, again, destined to eavesdrop on a Skywalker.

It was a genius little ship.

Zak missed its landing approach, but gleaned the mind of Jedi Master Chidor, who had gone out with Mara to greet the newcomer, and he had seen the full extent of the ship.

In its landing configuration it resembled somewhat a scaled down cockpit section of a Lambda-class Imperial shuttlecraft, its forward transparisteel port slanted back more so that the single occupant within was either seated further back or reclined part-way to avoid bashing their head against it. There was a quartet of ion drive cylinders extending from the rear of the pod, the two upper cylinders jutting out just a little ahead of the others, and the top of the pod continued backwards until it overlapped the upper engines to a point where a person standing atop it wouldn't see the drive.

Down the middle of the roofing was a fin that started level with the plating, rising up as it swept back further than the topside engine covering and tapering off and back around in a hook-like fashion back towards the engines.

From what he could glean from the elder Jedi's mind, in flight three wings folded from their compartments along the ship's hull, virtually building themselves up automatically and then deconstructing during the landing cycle. Each wing was curved forward like a sickle and had a laser cannon slotted onto its very tip, which in the landing configuration appeared to be mounted to the tri-points of the flight pod.

As Zak had not yet had the chance to get a closer look at the ship, he could only guess at the rest of the armaments and systems, or even if the ship possessed an astromech interface.

"Then as soon as the refuelling has been completed, I would be on my way," the girl said stubbornly, and Zak sensed a flash of frustration within her. He recognised her stubbornness as akin to his own and stifled an amused giggle. "But do at least tell me whether or not he is here. He and I have much to discuss."

"Like what, exactly?" Luke asked patiently. Zak smiled; the tone of Luke's voice gave him the distinct impression he had just sat forward in his seat and pressed his fingers together in front of him with his elbows resting on the table.

"Like … family matters."

Family matters? Zak's smile disappeared.

Aside from Tash, he _had_ no family left in the galaxy. Most everyone had been on Alderaan when the Empire had destroyed it. His only remaining relatives were his uncle via marriage—Hoole—and a second cousin who had been on Coruscant at the time on vacation. His cousin had been killed by a servant of the Emperor decades ago when Zak, Tash and Hoole had foiled _Project Starscream_, and Hoole had been killed a few years later on Sullust by someone only Zak could name.

"I don't under—ah! I see it now."

"Yes. Zak is my father."

And suddenly, with those words, Zak finally remembered why the girl's name was so disturbingly familiar to him.

His memories of his and Tash's time on Sullust all those years ago fast-forwarded before his eyes, playing out like an inconvenient drama from one of Tash's favourite holo-novels.

Before he could stop himself, he stood up and pushed the door open.

Luke looked up at him. He was indeed seated in the position Zak imagined, though Zak suppressed a smile at this revelation. The girl in the seat opposite Luke turned around to face him.

Zak looked down at her with a forced neutral expression. "Alitha." was the only thing he said. "Your mother is Alitha."


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

Zak stood there in the doorway, completely enthralled by the beauty of the girl that sat before him, looking up at him with his mother's eyes.

Suddenly in his mind, her claim didn't seem so ridiculous, didn't seem so outlandish that he would be annoyed by the implication. That she had his mother's eyes in every perfect detail could be a sign of nothing but what she had said. He couldn't honestly say that he could deny her claim held the spark of truth; never mind that it didn't make a single scrap of sense.

Allina was a few inches shorter than he—at a guess, as she wasn't currently standing—and her eyes were as blue as sapphires and round, framed by the same perfect number of lashes above and below. Her face was not at all enhanced by any form of makeup application, and her eyes seemed to sparkle with the same warmth and affection that Milessa Arranda's had once.

Her blue-black hair was down to below her shoulder line and tied back into a ponytail which was held together by a purple leather strap. Her ears were not decorated with piercings, like most civilians, so he assumed that she either saw it a pointless affectation or she wasn't as civilian as she appeared.

Though, if he resigned himself to judging her standing by the kind of ship she had arrived in, there was no way she was a civilian. He doubted if it was even registered, as he thought that the Republic navy would have tried to claim it for itself if it was.

She was dressed simply in an emerald green shirt buttoned all the way to the neckline with the collar turned down at the sides but not the back and matching pants. A brown belt encircled her midsection, where Zak spied a communicator and a grapple-hook reel from his vantage point. Around her wrists were thick brown Rancor leather cuffs with zip seals on the underside.

"If I might ask …" Luke began. "Alitha is …?"

"My mother," Allina replied, turning back to Luke and becoming serious once more. "She's on board her ship. Unfortunately she had other business to attend to so she brought me part way on the liner before I left in my fighter to come the rest of the way."

"Unfortunately this information doesn't help me at all," Luke said apologetically. He looked up at Zak, who merely stepped into the room fully and shut the door behind him.

He didn't sit down in the second empty seat, next to Allina, but stood in the corner leaning against the wall as he looked to the elder Jedi.

"Remember how Tash and I said that our journey with our uncle ended on Sullust?" Luke nodded vaguely. "Well before his … end, we met a young woman there called Alitha. She was older than us, but was quick to befriend us and show us around while Uncle Hoole bartered for the _Starchild_. I in particular got to know her very well."

"But who is she?"

"The illegitimate daughter of the galaxy's last tyrant," Zak said through gritted teeth.

Luke tensed as he read the meaning behind the words, and Allina tensed as well. But when Zak attempted to probe her thoughts to discover the reason for her reaction, he met only a thick wall set up to keep both him and Luke out. She was Force trained, as Zak would have suspected.

"As Alitha told it, she was once apprenticed to Darth Vader. Her father tasked Vader to teach her the ways of the Force, probably of the thinking that such a task was beneath his station. She couldn't be seen receiving untoward attention from the Emperor when he had an apprentice already.

"During the battle of Yavin, Vader abandoned her aboard the Death Star, telling her that everything would be fine and that she was perfectly safe. But just before you fired the kill shot, she sensed then that it was entirely untrue and raced for the hanger bay as fast as she could.

"When she got there, she stole a shuttle and left, jumping to hyperspace as soon as she could to avoid detection from any surviving Imperials." Zak took a breath and looked over at Allina again, who was listening with genuine interest.

Obviously Alitha hadn't told her this story before. The reason why was something he would have to remember to ask her if he ever saw her again.

"She went straight to Sullust, sold the ship and brought a residence there, and started to train herself in the ways of the Force with the sole intent on hunting down both Vader and the Emperor—who she assumed told Vader to abandon her—to kill them both."

"Did she recognise your potential as a Force user?" Luke asked with interest.

"She did. Tash's too. She offered to train us both. I went off to ask Uncle Hoole if it was alright if she travelled with us, for a while at least, when he was killed. I never got the chance. And then with what happened after, the last time I saw her was that morning."

"When I was conceived," Allina said with a nod. "Mother told me that part."

"What happened?" Zak asked, forcing the words from between his lips. He wasn't in any mood to talk about Alitha really, but he had to know a few things about her first, such as what she had been up to since they had last met. "She didn't come after Tash and me."

"She didn't know what had happened until years later. She told me that for years she thought that you just abandoned her, what with your caretaker's murder and all."

Zak fought back a bubble of rising anger and felt Luke's own calming thoughts drifting into his mind to assist him, though he made no attempt to read the young man's thoughts.

"But about four years after you two disappeared, she got some information that you were still on Sullust. Apparently a molten cave-in had sealed over the building you were in, held at bay by the protective shielding. She couldn't get through to you."

"She wouldn't have if she'd tried," Luke pointed out. "The people that eventually got through said that there were a lot of safeguards and traps put in place even after the last of the energy had drained from the shield emitters. And the building was covered in Force-repelling energies."

Zak remembered. Not only were the traps in place to keep thieves out, but they were also to keep prisoners in. Zak and Tash had been forced to carefully navigate each trap with the assistance of Han Solo and Chewbacca, who had both experienced them on the way in.

If he'd been but one inch taller …

"But that doesn't explain … this," Zak said, gesturing towards Allina with a nod. "If you were conceived the night I last saw Alitha, you should be well into your late twenties. How old are you?"

"Fifteen," the girl said proudly.

"Would you care to explain, young lady?" Luke asked.

Allina nodded to him, and then turned to look at Zak again. "On my thirteenth birthday, my mother told me what had happened to my father, the only person she'd ever loved"—Zak fought the gag reflex and ignored the questioning look from Luke—"told me that he would become a great person one day and that he would do great things and be remembered for centuries.

"Admittedly she hadn't known him for very long, but enough that she missed him. I wanted to know you"—she was now talking directly to Zak—"so much. I'd been learning from my mother for thirteen years. I'd learned a lot from her."

Her hands ducked out of sight for a moment and when they returned, it was to deposit a pair of lightsabers gently atop Luke's desk.

"Impressive!" Luke exclaimed, reaching for them. "May I?"

Allina nodded, but did not take her eyes off the Jedi master as he examined both of the lightsabers thoroughly, commenting on her design choices and the internal structuring. He eventually praised her work, and her mother's teachings which had led to it, and then asked her to continue.

Zak held out his left hand and one of the lightsabers slid off the desk and slapped into the palm of his open hand. He closed his fingers around the cool metal and began his own cursory examination as the girl continued her story.

"What I really wanted to do next was to meet my other parent," Allina said. "I'd only ever known Mother, and from what she told me that day I wanted to meet my father as well. The only issue with that was that she had no idea when, if ever, he would be released from the stasis pod. She said that it might never happen, and even if it did it might be well after our time. I saw only one solution to this and I asked—begged, really—to be put into stasis as well until he was released."

"Your mother agreed to this?" Luke asked sceptically.

"After several weeks of persistence on my part," Allina replied. "It wasn't very mature behaviour, I admit in hindsight, but I was desperate to meet my father and I would have done anything for that to be possible."

"Maybe in the days of the Old Order, you would have been admonished for immature behaviour, young lady, but I don't frown on it so readily. After all, I have a trio of troublemakers for relatives."

Zak was in the process of fiddling with the blade adjuster dial when he caught the remark about the Solos and he flipped the elder Jedi a brief smile. The Solos attracted trouble almost as much as the Arrandas, from what Zak had been told. Maybe he and Jaina did make a good match.

Wait—where had that come from?

He shrugged the thought off and clicked the activator button with the lightsaber on the new adjustment. A red-white blade of plasma energy shot out of the end for a foot in length.

Zak cringed. Red really was not his colour. He switched the device off with a nod and returned the dial to original setting before tossing the lightsaber to Allina, who gripped it firmly and clipped it back to the side of her belt Zak couldn't see from his place.

"She had me choose between cryonics and carbon freezing and personally, I think cryonics was a more attractive option. I've heard some nasty stories about recovering from carbon freezing and I didn't like the odds. I woke up about two years ago with my mother hovering over me, looking years older, and telling me it was time."

"Why so long to come here, then?" Zak asked curiously.

"We've been travelling all over the galaxy searching. I said that the logical place to start would be all the Jedi training facilities where you were likely to be beginning your training. Mother reasoned that it was unlikely that the Jedi would have come across you and that you would be on Sullust or one of the mid-to-outer rim worlds making a civilian life for yourself.

"But then, only just last year, we intercepted a subspace transmission that had been cleverly hidden amongst galactic background noise. It was from you stating that you and another Jedi were held captive by a man called Pravus, and that he had killed yet another Jedi who had tried to rescue you.

"I told Mother; showed her the transmission log and the translation readout, and we headed straight for the location the signal led us to. All we found there were debris and rubble, and a ship just making the jump into lightspeed."

"That would have been the _Valley Regent_," Luke said. Zak raised a quizzical eyebrow for an explanation, and was granted one. "After Jacen and I picked you and Jaina up and came back here, I got word that a Republic cruiser, the _Valley Regent_, was near the sector you were being held in. They arrived in the system and were extraordinarily quick in destroying the station and the defending ships."

"They took on a full battle group of Star Destroyers?"

"There wasn't a full group there. Brakiss just wanted you to think that there was to de-spirit you. All that was there was a pair of Interdictors, an Imperial II Star Destroyer and a couple of frigates."

"Sounds kind of battle group-y to me," Zak mumbled.

Luke chuckled. "With the Interdictors busy keeping subspace distorted with the GWGs, they couldn't assist the other ships in taking on the _Valley Regent_. She's an MC80 cruiser, Zak. More than enough to handle what Brakiss had defending the station. And I gather you and Jaina were able to do something about the station's defences during your escape, as Commander Faxz reported they didn't fire a shot."

"How did he know we weren't still on the station when it was destroyed?"

"Your message did say you would escape at the start of the new month. He took it on faith that you would be able to pull it off, and he later found out just how right he was."

Zak nodded, and then turned back to face Allina, who was watching his reactions with interest. She straightened under his gaze, as if trying to prove herself to him, to show him that she could be proper, and the thought that she sought his approval—_his_, of all people—brought the beginnings of a smile to his lips.

"What did you do next?" he asked her.

"Continued to travel the galaxy in search of you," Allina replied. "Mother followed up on every rumour, every report of your appearances that took us from Tatooine and Geonosis all the way around the Outer Rim and Wild Space regions to Bonadan and Ammuud. Needless to say we found nothing substantial in our travels. But regardless of the lack of success we had, even Mother wasn't disheartened and continue the search."

"And yet she chose not to accompany you here to see Zak?" Luke asked her.

Zak sensed the spark of doubt in his mind, and he reached out to him. _Suspicious?_

_Very_, Luke replied silently. _I do believe her story up until that point. What I don't understand is why, if her mother was so eager to see you again after all those years apart, she did not come with her daughter._

Zak nodded, and Allina either did not notice, or made no sign of noticing as her eyes were on the Jedi Master still.

"She's seeing to a business venture somewhere in the vicinity of Malastare at the moment but told me that as soon as she's done she'll be coming straight here to meet us," Allina said smoothly.

"I look forward to it," Luke said with a smile. "It's gratifying to know that she chose the right path after beginning down a darker one. And to see the results of her knowledge here before me … well I'm quite impressed."

Allina smiled gratuitously and Zak pushed himself away from the wall.

"I believe there's a spare suite on the second level," he said to Luke. "With the interests of seeming good hosts and all; the least we could do is offer Allina a place to stay for as long as she's here."

"True. I was concerned about putting all of our other guests in there together but I suppose if Allina would take that room for a short while, we can ask Lando to set aside some room on GemDiver for the others."

He turned back to Allina and flashed her one of his custom smiles that Zak found so infectious. "You have caught us at a very uncomfortable time indeed, young lady," he said politely. "I was expecting representatives from the Republic Senate to arrive within a few days. But you are, of course, welcome to stay here until your mother arrives."

"Many thanks," Allina said, pushing herself to her feet and reaching out to take Luke's hand. Zak watched them shake and then led Allina out with a nod to the Jedi Master.

* * *

Zak was still in a state of mild shock as they approached Allina's temporary room on the second level a few minutes later. After leaving Skywalker's office, and shutting the door behind them, neither Zak nor Allina had spoken a word. He led the way entirely, keeping his senses alive and alert.

He didn't know this girl, but he knew her mother. Twenty-eight years was a long time.

And yet, he sensed no deception from Allina. No sign that there was any hidden motive to her presence here at the Praxeum. But Zak still couldn't wrap his head around the idea that he, at eighteen now, was a father to a girl in her mid-teens. Tash would kill him. Or she would just continue to snob him off like she was presently. Jaina and Jacen would be confused, no doubt.

He and Alitha had been together only that one night. It hadn't been planned at all. There had been a lot of alcohol involved—more than a lot. Several bottles of brands and tastes he'd never even heard of.

Underage drinking would have been strike one in Tash's book; being intimate with someone several years his senior while underage drinking would have been strike two. Becoming a father by being intimate with a woman several years his senior while underage drinking was enough to have him shot.

Still reeling from the news, it took Allina alerting him that they had arrived for him to stop walking and turn to her. He nodded and ushered her ahead of him into the room without a word.

"It's not much," Zak said stiffly. "The previous tenant recently departed to become a padawan to a Jedi Knight and we've had no one arrive to fill up the space. Come to think of it, there'll be a lot of spare room around soon."

"Others leaving as well?"

"Yes. Several Jedi have expressed interest in some of the students here, and others are going to Coruscant to train under the masters there."

While many didn't see him in a particularly flattering light, he knew that none of them were actually leaving to escape his presence. Skywalker taught tolerance as part of his instruction. He shrugged the thought away and swept his hand to encompass everything in the room.

"It's got all the basics, though. A bed to sleep on, a wardrobe to store any clothes you brought with you, a work desk with a holocomm and portable Holo projector and a bedside table with a light.

"There's a key to lock the door if you so desire, but you'll have to request it from Master Skywalker. It's not much of a habit around here to be keeping secrets, but sometimes privacy is nice."

"Father—"

"Zak," he corrected her, putting up a hand to stop her. "I'm still … in a bit of shock about this whole thing, and therefore being called "Father" makes me uncomfortable."

"Zak," Allina started, nodding, "why is it that talking of Mother causes you to react so stiffly."

"Twenty eight years is a long time," Zak said, repeating his earlier thought aloud. "The shields encasing our tomb ran out of power almost ten years ago and she still didn't come for us. How else am I supposed to react after that?"

"I don't know," Allina conceded quietly.

They stood in silence for a moment, in which Zak reflected upon his attitude towards the girl. Perhaps he had been too stern and harsh with her. After all, she seemed like a nice person.

And if she really was his child, as he gathered Luke was going to have verified by Geesev—Ugh, he thought, blood test!—then the least he could do was get to know her. She deserved that much. She had, for all intents and purposes, come across time to meet him. How would it be fair on her for him to shun her and turn his back simply because he had a new life now and didn't want to think about the responsibilities of being a father?

"She really does miss you," Allina tried, looking into his eyes.

Zak nodded and turned on his heel. He closed the door softly behind him and continued around the corner and past the rec room and mess hall to the lift tubes up to the third level.

And as the nearest lift opened for him and he stepped into it, he suddenly knew that he was going to be keeping a close eye on Allina for a while to make sure that her presence was not more than she led him and Luke to believe.


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

When Zak got around to going back down to the _Silent Hunter_ a couple of days later, he saw what Jaina and Lowbacca had done to it and it brought a genuine grin to his lips.

Truthfully this business with Allina had kept him in a pensive mood and he found himself rarely seeking company as he was too busy remembering his last night with Alitha over and over in order to try and poke holes in the girl's story.

To no avail.

The _Silent Hunter_'s light grey hull had been repainted a much darker shade earlier, and when that had finally dried, Jaina and Lowie had sought to brand her.

On the starboard side of the ship's hull at the midpoint in stark white paint was the standard for the New Galactic Republic—the starbird pattern surrounded by a ring of stars, all encased within a thin circle that Zak knew to be gold in colour on the actual Republic standard. And opposing it on the port side was the symbol for Skywalker's New Jedi Order—a large circle encasing a shining star with the starbird overlaid.

It was beautiful.

He himself couldn't have thought to have the standards the ship would be representing painted upon the hull, but he was glad that someone had.

At the moment, he was alone with the Solo twins on the bridge of the _Hunter_, discussing with them the unexpected arrival of Allina.

Luke had told them nothing, it seemed. Evidently, he wasn't going to breach Zak's right to privacy by spreading news of Allina's identity and purpose of visit to everyone. No doubt, he had at least told his wife.

Thus far, all he'd told the Solos was that she was claiming to be Zak's daughter. He hadn't yet gotten around to telling them of his one-night fling with Alitha all those years ago that might have led to offspring.

"So Jaina's not the first to warm your—" Jacen started. Jaina tossed a hydrospanner at him and it hit him in the arm, cutting him off. "Ow! Heart, I was going to say heart!"

"I'm sure you were," Jaina said warningly. "Behave yourself!"

"Yes, mother," Jacen replied with a cheeky grin. He turned back to Zak. "So, the girl's mother; who was she?"

"Her name's Alitha," Zak said grimly.

"Oh that tells me a lot," Jacen said, almost the same way Luke had responded to the same kind of statement when Allina had first arrived. "Alitha who?"

"It doesn't matter. She comes from a well-known family line, but you wouldn't know of _her_ at all," Zak deflected quickly.

He felt that to tell the twins that she was Palpatine's daughter would mean repeating the rest of her story. He wasn't particularly in the mood to do that right at the moment.

"Tash and I knew her from Sullust before we were imprisoned. She'd been making her way as a helper at the spaceport loading and unloading ship freights. She was a Force user, and she befriended me and Tash instantly when she realised that we had sensitivity to the Force as well.

"One night I went to see her to talk to her about her offer to teach me and Tash how to connect with and use the Force more deliberately. We wanted her to teach us, and when I told her that, she wanted me to find out if my uncle would let her travel with us so she could.

"I stayed for the rest of the night and we got sidetracked talking about anything and everything that we could. She told me more about her life leading up to Sullust, all the challenges she had to face to get to where she was, the kind of life she was leading on Sullust and how much she abhorred it. Then we got back on track and she showed me some of the things she could do, and by the end of the night I was able to levitate a cup. Though I only did it once and was unable at the time to repeat the result.

"She kept pouring drinks. Strong drinks. Drinks I shouldn't have been drinking at my age, but I didn't particularly care. When I woke up in the morning it was in her bed with her fast asleep next to me. Memory of the rest of the night slowly came back to me and at the time, I was neither annoyed nor ashamed of what had happened. I genuinely liked her. But I still had to go see my uncle about her coming with us so after a quick breakfast I took off."

"That was the day your uncle was killed, wasn't it?" Jaina asked.

"Yes," Zak said with a nod. Jacen's expression grew grim at the mention. "What with the authorities questioning me and then the kidnapping, I didn't get to see Alitha again. As her daughter tells it, she thought I'd just abandoned her; up and left with Tash with nothing left to keep me there."

"Which you didn't," Jacen clarified. "But I can see how she might have thought that. With the anti-Force around the building, she wouldn't have known you were in there—stasis or not."

"Exactly," Zak pointed out. "When we were woken up by your father and Chewbacca and told how long we'd been out of circulation, Tash and I were a little disheartened that Alitha hadn't tried to come for us and hadn't freed us from the stasis. Without Hoole, we would have been OK with her as our guardian."

"Guardian?" Jacen's eyes were wide and Zak prepared himself for the obvious question. "Just how old was she at the time this all happened?"

"Twenty-three," Zak said. Jacen wolf-whistled and Jaina shot him another admonishing glance as she wrapped her arms around Zak's left arm and drew herself closer to him. "And now, I've got this whole new problem thrown right into my face just as I'm recovering from the incident with Darth Pravus. It's both frustrating and confusing and I have no idea what to do or even if I have the nerve to tell Tash about it."

"She's going to find out sooner or later," Jaina pointed out. "Whether it be from you or from Allina's mind when she comes across her. Wouldn't it be best if it came from her brother rather than from a stranger?"

"In theory," Zak conceded, glancing at Jaina. "But like you were, she refuses to even look at me. How am I supposed to tell her if she won't tolerate me near?"

"She greeted you the other day," Jaina reminded him.

"You were there, Jaina. She knew if she hadn't you might have torn strips off her for being ignorant," Zak retorted.

"Push your luck, then," Jacen said. "I know what you're thinking. Wait, no, let me guess, OK?" he interrupted just as Zak opened his mouth to protest. "She's not talking to you, so there's no point. And even if she was, and there was a point, you're wary of her reaction.

"You were drinking alcohol when you shouldn't have, you were involved with someone much older than you, and it's possible that from that … coupling … came this Allina girl." He paused and mulled it over. "OK, I see your point. She's going to kill you. You better start running now while you can. Both these ships are ready to go."

Zak just stared at him for a moment until the grin crept upon his friend's face, then he narrowed his eyes in protest. "Very funny," he said.

"I thought it was," Jacen replied cheerfully. "You know what else I find funny? What happens when Boba Fett takes his helmet off?"

Zak sighed. Another one of Jacen's humourless jokes to pass the time; hardly what he needed. "I haven't the slightest clue" he said half-heartedly.

Jacen shook his head, disappointed. "No one knows, because he usually shoots them."

"Well," Jaina said quickly, taking advantage of the fact that only Jacen was laughing. She pushed herself to her feet and simultaneously unlatching herself from Zak's arm. "I hate to be one to add to the list of your problems, Zak, but tomorrow is when the Republic oversight delegation will be arriving. We need to passcode-seal this hangar and start organising the reception—we're not going to have time to come back down to do more work on either of the ships."

Zak and Jacen looked to each other and groaned aloud before they too stood up and followed Jaina out of the bridge and off the ship.


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11**

Jaina had been allowed to forgo her duties in the morning the next day. Instead, she'd acquired Zak on his way to his class's lesson with her uncle and taken him down to the landing platform to greet the guests that were now arriving.

Both of them were in plain clothes underneath an opened robe—brown for her, black for him—and stood on the edge of the landing pad outside the academy's structure.

A shuttle was landing in front of them, an old Lambda-class with the Republic standard printed in bold black upon each side of the shuttle's dorsal fin. When the landing was completed, and the ramp at the front of the ship lowered, the delegation departed.

Jaina groaned when she saw who was at the head of the party, and when Zak turned his head to look at her, she shook her head so slightly that the oncoming persons would not see it.

They stopped in front of the Jedi, a false smile pitched into place on Senator Pwoe's squid-like face.

"Would I be remiss in recognising you as Jedi Jaina Solo?" he said, holding out his hand to greet Jaina.

She took the senator's hand with a nod and shook it reluctantly. She made sure to maintain a feigned smile as she pumped the Quarran's hand then dropped her hand back to her side and looked to the others in the party.

At Pwoe's side was the aide assigned to him for the duration of the oversight. He was a young human male in official looking attire that bore no out-of-place creases and looked tailored specifically for him. His yellowish hair waved in the breeze and his startling grey eyes swept across everything in sight as he jotted notes onto a sheet of flimsi.

Behind him and off to the side were a pair she knew quite well and had been eager to introduce Zak to.

Keyan Jace was a well respected Jedi Knight within the Order. Jaina had heard that he'd been offered a seat on the High Council when it had first formed, and again more recently after the death of Kylia Okras, but he'd turned both offers down in favour of pursuing a more fulfilling role as a mentor and teacher.

Luke Skywalker even spoke of the respect he had for the man, who had been born only a few short years after Order Sixty-six's issuing, and had lived his life very carefully, keeping his identity as a Force-user secret from everyone.

Most of the knowledge the man had had been self-taught or learned from long lost Jedi holocrons. The rest had been learned since the reestablishment of the Jedi Order and having met Luke.

Keyan Jace was known most notably for his skills as a diplomat and peacekeeper, and it was rumoured that even in the most hostile of situations, he had yet to draw his lightsaber once.

He was tall, broad and muscled more than most human Jedi preferred, and there was strength in those muscles that would make even the best duellist recoil. His dark hair was long and loose around his shoulders and his dark brown eyes were locked onto that of the Jedi apprentice beside him as they conversed quietly amongst themselves.

His apprentice, Talesa Valara, she knew better. She had been a student at the Praxeum on Ossus but had spent some time on Yavin 4 as well. She and Jaina had become good friends before she had been recalled by the Jedi Council at the request of Keyan Jace who had expressed an interest in extending the girl's training. They'd continued to stay in touch, though, and Jaina knew that even though Talesa hadn't mentioned any such thing, the way she and her master looked at each other as they spoke told her there was more going on between them than just a master-student relationship.

Talesa was Jaina's height, with striking red hair that was tied back and tucked under her robe. She had a supple body and was renowned for her speed and agility. Her eyes were the most interesting part of her. They changed colour infrequently from blue to green and back again. There was nothing in particular that triggered the change; it just happened randomly. It gave the young woman an air of mystery that Jaina found to be highly distracting.

The two Jedi approached next and Senator Pwoe stepped aside to take in the scale of the building. "Good day to you, Master Jace," Jaina said with respect, bowing her head.

Some Jedi Knights didn't much care for being addressed as "Master" when they weren't of the Master rank. But as Jaina saw it, Jace was older and better trained than she, and because he was a teacher of other Jedi, he more than deserved to be addressed as such.

Jace and Valara both bowed their heads in response and smiled warmly at her. "I think Uncle Luke will be gratified to know that the two of you have accompanied the good senator on his visit." _Thus ensuring there's _some_ Jedi oversight to the Republic oversight_, she added silently.

Talesa and Zak both grinned broadly at the silent comment and Keyan Jace nodded. "Your mother rather insisted. She made quite the case for it to the Council herself. Both she and your father send their greetings, I might add. They wished to accompany us but duty prevented them from doing so."

Jace then turned his gaze onto Zak, and Jaina felt him squirm invisibly. "You must be Zak Arranda," he said simply.

Talesa gasped beside her master at the name, and silenced herself when Senator Pwoe and his advisors looked over. They too had heard the name. "We'll meet you inside, Senator," Jace said politely.

Pwoe took the hint graciously and went inside with his entourage. Jaina sent out a summons to her brother to show them around.

"I am," Zak said. He turned and walked alongside Jace slowly back to the Praxeum, Jaina and Talesa following closely behind.

"There is much about you I have heard, young man," Jace said. Zak groaned.

Jaina knew it was difficult enough for Zak to know parts of what he had done, but to know that others that weren't involved knew about it was must have made him feel that much worse about it.

"I haven't come to pass judgement on you, young Jedi. It's a rare thing this day in age that one gets to be in the presence of someone that has been responsible for the death of a Sith Lord. Even the Grand Master doesn't see himself as the one responsible for the Emperor's death. After all—Vader and Palpatine in effect destroyed each other. I wanted to gauge for myself if the rumours about you could possibly be true."

"Unfortunately," Zak muttered. Jaina reached out and gently touched his shoulder to comfort him as they walked. "I don't have much memory of it, to be honest."

Jaina sensed that he wasn't yet ready to let others know what he had so far remembered, and that when he did it would be at a time of his choosing.

She respected that. If she were in his place she didn't think she'd be able to admit the brazen act either, even if the victim _had_ been a darksider.

And yet, with what they had both been put through because of that man, did he not deserve his fate?

Time and time again, her uncle had taken every presented opportunity to try to save Brakiss. Though many believed him to be irredeemable, it was ultimately Luke Skywalker's opinion that mattered. He thought that Brakiss could be brought away from the corruption that plagued him to the very core and bring him to the light.

Jaina remembered thinking once, after meeting Brakiss herself the first time, that there was the spark of good in him. She couldn't gauge just how much of a spark it was though.

But Luke had changed his mind along the way. Perhaps it was when Brakiss and his Shadow Academy had attacked the Praxeum, and hers and Jacen's friend Zekk—who was now roaming the galaxy alone—had turned from the corruption seeded in him by Brakiss. The next time he had encountered Brakiss; he'd tried once more to redeem him, but upon failure had chosen the only recourse available: the destruction of Brakiss.

And then Brakiss came back from the dead and again kidnapped Jaina, that time alongside Zak rather than her twin. That time she sensed no spark of good in him, no chance that he could ever be saved.

Not even her uncle would have tried it. Not even her uncle_ had_ tried it. Kylia might have tried, back on the station, and it was perhaps one of the many things that had led to her death; that she just refused to see that the Brakiss she knew, that Brakiss himself, was gone … replaced by an ugly shell of a man shrouded so fully in the dark side it made Force-sensitives around him nauseous.

There had been no other option but his death, really.

Imprisonment was not safe. Even shrouded in the mystical field emanating naturally from the Ysalamiri, he could still escape from any prison beset him. Though death was ultimately where his path was destined to end, Jaina was deeply saddened by two facts of it. Firstly, that he had allowed himself to become so dark, and had resisted all attempts to free him from himself. And secondly, that it had been by Zak's hand.

"That's perfectly understandable," Keyan Jace continued, patting Zak gently on the other shoulder reassuringly. "I wasn't planning on asking you to relive the experience for my entertainment or peace of mind. Regardless of the reason, regardless of the person, being responsible for another man's life being extinguished weighs heavily on the conscience, I know."

"Thank you, Master Jedi," Zak responded in kind.

_He's cute_, Jaina heard in her mind. She dropped her hand from Zak's shoulder and glanced over at Talesa to see her smiling wickedly at her. _You never mentioned he was cute!_

_Hey!_ Jaina whispered back to her friend's mind. _Behave yourself. Zak and I are friends, nothing more._

_Oh, is that so?_

Jaina felt Talesa probing through her memories until she came across one and prodded it to the forefront of Jaina's mind.

* * *

_Zak was flat on his back on a padded bed in the recovery ward when I walked through the doors. His eyelids were closed and his eyes beneath them were completely still and motionless._

_ I found it unsettling. Even in sleep, the eyes always moved. Comas, apparently, were a lot different to regular unconsciousness._

_ When my brothers and I had finally been able to subdue Zak in the Grand Audience Chamber, we'd brought him straight down to see Uncle Luke. It hadn't gone so well, but I'd managed to pick up the situation and when he'd been subdued again for good, Uncle Luke had demanded he be taken to the infirmary right away where he was put into a medical coma and placed under the care of a reactivated and indignant Geesev._

_ It had been days before Geesev, with help, had come up with a suitable explanation for Zak's behaviour, and a possible way to "fix" him had been devised. Jaina hadn't been too keen to start, but in the end they'd had no choice._

_ The surgery had lasted for many hours, with me pressing my face against the plexiglass window in the operating room's door. I wasn't going to let him out of my sight again. He wasn't a threat anymore, but I couldn't shake the feeling that something would go wrong, that I—we—might lose him more permanently._

_ When the surgery was over, Zak had been dipped into a bacta tank for a few short hours to heal, and then pulled back out, dried, and laid to rest on a bio bed in the recovery ward until he woke._

_ That was when I'd been allowed to start visiting him, and I definitely wasn't going to miss the opportunity._

_ Still in my bedclothes, I padded quietly across the cold, panelled floor of the ward and sat myself down on the stool beside the bio bed. Instantly, I took Zak's hand into my own and gripped it over his chest, squeezing softly every few seconds as I fought against the threat of tears._

_ I reached out with my other hand and gently stroked his cold cheek. "You can wake up now, Zak," she whispered to him. Geesev wasn't around; he was probably shut down in the observation ward or somewhere else._

_ I would have been surprised if he had woken up then, and looked up at me and demanded to know who had turned out all the lights, acting as if the last month hadn't happened at all. But I was still sad that he didn't._

_ I knew that his sister must have been taking it badly, but I also knew that she refused to see him. She was still seething over what he had done. She might even have had words with me and reminded him of all that Zak had done to us all over the course of the past month if she'd caught me here. But I didn't particularly care at the moment. I just couldn't stand to know that he was here on his own with no one to keep him company while he tried to pull through it and return to them._

* * *

Jaina frowned at the intrusion into her memories when she returned to the present and shot a dirty look sidelong at Talesa,

_He's a friend, how else would I have reacted to seeing him like that? Or would you prefer I not react the same if you ever end up in the same situation?_ Jaina shot back at Talesa.

Though, deep down, she knew that the other girl was right. Zak and Jaina had developed a private and unique telepathic bond during their captivity. Even her uncle was at a loss to explain how it had happened; only that it wasn't a common occurrence.

Through that bond, they had been able to feel each other's emotions and sensations, and the pain that each of them had endured since. Because of that bond, Jaina had found herself more drawn to him than she initially had.

At first, that night she had asked him to walk the Praxeum with her under the pretence of giving him a tour, she had been mildly interested. He was handsome, with an air of charm, mischief and mystery, intelligent with premature wisdom, and they shared a few common interests which gave them something to talk about.

Now, with the bond between them, she knew more about his feelings and his thoughts than perhaps even his sister did at times. It only intensified the attraction she had for him to know that the careless joviality he presented so similarly to Jacen's was just the upper layers protecting the inner self.

But regardless of what she felt toward him, Talesa had no right to pry for her own amusement.

_Hardly for amusement_; Talesa responded silently, her thoughts sounding a little chagrined. _I like to know that my friends are happy._

The conversation ahead of them was still continuing, and Jaina tuned back in just as Keyan asked how she was doing lately under Mara's tutelage.

"Very well, thank you," she responded cheerfully. "Though, she was a little cross with me a few days ago. I think she's relatively over that now."

"Eavesdropping? Jaina, you're beyond that." Keyan Jace clicked his tongue disapprovingly at her and then stopped walking to face both her and Zak. "But, incidentally, who is this other visitor the Praxeum hosts?"

"Young woman who calls herself Allina," Jaina replied before Zak could. "She's a Force-user taught by her own mother—someone who has no ties to the Republic or the Jedi Order."

"Impressive," Talesa chimed in. "Did the mother come with her?"

"No. Allina says that her mother is away on other business somewhere around the Malastare system, and that she will be joining her here shortly."

As if on cue, Zak closed his mind, and the private link to Jaina, sealing them tight to keep her out. It made her wonder what he didn't want her to know when he had been so honest with her and Jacen about the situation thus far.

She continued anyways. "We should be expecting her within the next couple of weeks; depending on how long her business takes."

Keyan nodded and Zak turned again to continue leading them. Jaina realised now that they were inside the building itself, on the ground level heading across the hangar deck to the lifts on the west side.

"I would very much like to meet this young woman at some point," Jace said curiously.

"I'm sure you will tomorrow night at the welcome feast we've arranged to honour Senator Pwoe's arrival here," Jaina pointed out. Then she remembered the question she had wanted to ask. "Master Jace, if you don't mind my asking; could you explain the senator's reaction when he heard Zak's name mentioned on the landing pad outside?"

"Yes, very curious," Zak muttered sarcastically.

"I'm afraid Zak's suspicions are right," Keyan said solemnly. "And I'm surprised your parents didn't tell you why we were coming here."

"Uncle Luke told us," Jaina responded automatically. "The Republic is issuing a temporary oversight order for this Jedi installation to ensure that it's a venture worth the support of the Republic."

"It was Senator Pwoe that brought the idea to the last Senate convening," Talesa explained. "Word of Darth Pravus's demise at the hands of someone who was in only their first year of Jedi instruction was, while laughable normally, something that had a lot of Senators worried, though Pwoe was the only one to voice his apparent concerns. He cited Anakin Skywalker's turn to the dark side as evidence to back his claims that it could very well be happening here again."

"That's the official side of the story," Jace put in before Jaina could respond. "Your parents and the Jedi Council—and myself and Talesa, of course—are of the opinion that Pwoe was put up to this by the Chief of State himself, to make another attempt to either ostracise the Jedi from the Republic or bring the entire Order under … erm … paw."

Talesa turned to Zak and gave him an apologetic look, as if she knew her next words were going to upset him. "I'm sorry to say, Zak, that the Senate has been made aware, albeit limitedly, of the events that followed your slaying of the Sith."

She was right. Zak's face sunk as the four of them stepped quietly into a lift and waited as it took them up to the next level.

_Are you OK?_ Jaina asked him, forcing open the link as best she could. Zak didn't respond, nor did he look up at either of them until the lift stopped and they stepped out. _Zak? Are you OK?_

_I'll live. Could you conduct them to Luke alone? I wouldn't mind some privacy._

Jaina nodded and turned to the others, ushering them away and leaving Zak standing alone in the space before the lift tubes.

Before they rounded the corner taking Zak out of sight, she chanced a final look back to see him resting his forehead against the cold stone wall; his eyes squeezed shut as tightly as he could manage.

And the sight saddened her.


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12**

Zak couldn't shake the nagging suspicion that there was something less than trustworthy about their new guest, Allina. As such, he'd been keeping a close, but discreet, eye on her for the few days that she had so far been there.

As yet, there wasn't anything about her behaviour or her thoughts that gave away any hint of deception, any hint that what she was really there for was anything other than she'd stated. For all intents and purposes, she was being completely honest with both Luke Skywalker and Zak. But that was probably what had triggered Zak's suspicions in the first place.

His opinion of self-worth aside, he couldn't see any legitimate reason someone like Allina would have to spend two years roaming the galaxy in search of him.

There was just something about this whole thing that didn't feel right to him.

Sure, he'd accepted that it was a good possibility that she was really his daughter—what with the similarities to other women of his family he could remember, including Tash—but he couldn't shake the feeling that all was not as it seemed. There had to be another reason she was there; something other than just wanting to meet him.

She was the daughter of Alitha, after all, and Alitha was the daughter of Emperor Palpatine. Therefore, not everything either of them said could be taken at face value.

So when he caught Allina alone in her room the night after Keyan Jace, Talesa Valara and Republic senator Pwoe and his advisors had arrived, he naturally jumped into his suspicious mode.

Drawing his presence as tightly around his physical being as he could, he hung outside the slightly ajar door of the guest quarters Allina was in and waited.

What he heard, he was not expecting.

"Yes, Mother," Allina said impatiently, sounding less cheerful than she had when she'd been speaking to Zak.

There was a hard lining to her words. Perhaps things between her and her mother weren't as natural and pleasant as she'd led on.

"I've made contact with him, but I'm not making any progress."

Then came a voice he remembered, sounding almost exactly the way he remembered, save for the usual distortion of being relayed over a holocomm unit. "_Very good, child,_" Alitha said.

Zak detected no trace of pride in her tone, no note of gratitude or expectation that he would have expected to hear had she truly waited so long to see him again.

But he considered that she _might_ be genuinely eager to see him after all—to finish the job she'd started so many years ago.

"_What seems to be the problem?_"

"There's the minor problem that he doesn't trust me. He guards his thoughts around me too much, and I'm sure that he's monitoring my every movement. He doesn't believe that I'm here to see _him_, and that there must naturally be some hidden motive," Allina sounded a little disappointed somehow by the fact that Zak didn't trust her.

"_The truth can sometimes be painful._"

"It isn't the _whole_ truth, Mother," Allina responded stubbornly. "Whatever reasons you intended for me to be here now, _my_ main reason is him. I will not leave this place until my mission is a success."

"_Have you encountered any other problems?_" Alitha asked after a contemplative pause.

"Another minor setback is that he seems to have an intimate involvement with another Jedi here, which could complicate matters a little in the extraction."

It sounded like Allina was still talking about him, which made _some_ sense. But he couldn't wrap his head around "extraction". What was she tasked to extract? Could it be him, or Jaina, or perhaps it was something _from_ them. Maybe she was supposed to extract DNA from one or both of them, or brain cells.

Or brains. He shuddered at the thought and listened in for the rest of the discussion.

Alitha didn't reply, and it made Zak smile to imagine the visual reaction Allina was witnessing. Surely, if Alitha had ever truly felt anything for him in the past, she would have been shocked to hear that he was now with someone else.

"And lastly, he believes everything he's been told!" Wait, was that frustration? "All of the propaganda fed to him by the Jedi and the Rebels. Do you _know_ that they have the gall to be calling themselves a Republic? It's … it's … it's just downright disgusting!"

Zak's confusion peaked.

What reason did Allina have to think that the New Republic was nothing more than a band of rebels? Did she know nothing of current political standings? Just how long had she and Alitha been out in the wild sectors of the galaxy?

He checked his presence in the Force, and was shocked to realise he'd almost let his control slip. He withdrew it once more and though the resultant headache gave him great difficulty, and greater discomfort, the desire not to be found eavesdropping on the conversation was more paramount.

He could sense Allina's Force probes all around him, stretching far across the entire level to warn her of any plans to visit her, but they slipped past him as if he wasn't even there, which was exactly what he wanted her to think.

Whatever her plans were, he figured he might just find out soon enough.

"_Of this I am aware, child,_" Alitha's cold voice replied, injected with as much disdain as she could manage across the holocomm channel. "_But we do know the truth of it, do we not? We don't have to delude ourselves that they are something they could only dream to be but are in fact not. The path to the truth is a righteous one, and the wicked shall be dealt with at the right time._"

What the kriff was that nonsense?

"Understood." There was a pause in which Zak thought for a moment that the transmission was over. He was about to dart down the hall and away to privacy when Allina continued. "What would you have me do?"

"_Things are progressing much faster than I'd originally planned. We are secure here in wait for your signal to begin the next phase of the stratagem. The _Medusa_ is in position?_" Another pause, but Zak dared not reach out to confirm what he suspected was a non-verbal reply. "_Then continue with your mission as quickly and securely as you can, and begin the next stage of your assignment._"

"Yes, mother," Allina replied, subdued.

"_I shall see you again soon,_" Alitha's voice came through. There was no warmth in those words, no anticipation of reunion; just cold, calculative fact. "_Until then I'll be busy here._"

Zak heard the flick of a switch as Allina closed the transmission. The typically inaudible static background noise of the holocomm was silenced and all was calm.

Zak took advantage of the moment to slip away, ignoring the anguished sigh that came from Allina's room.

She was not as benign as she had led on.


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter 13**

He couldn't explain what it was that made him do it. Listening to Allina's communication with her mother hours earlier had put Zak on edge, true, but there had been nothing to say that he was in any immediate danger.

At least, not until he remembered "extraction", then, of course, he was right back on the edge.

So when he was dressed and ready to go to the welcome feast downstairs, he slipped a strong magnet into the sole pocket of his robe so that his lightsaber would hang from it, and then threw it loosely over his shoulders.

The Skywalkers, in conjunction with the Solo twins and a few others at the Praxeum, had decided that the formal dinner to greet their guests would be delayed for a night. This decision was mainly due to Allina's arrival, which had been so sudden and unexpected that it had caused quite a stir in the populace.

Though only a select few knew who exactly she was, they all knew why she was there, and it only served to make most people more wary of Zak, more guarded.

But it was not just a dinner to greet Senator Pwoe and his entourage. It was also a dinner to farewell those students of the Praxeum that would be leaving to begin their training under the tutelage of other Jedi knights and masters across known space. It was understood that Luke had prepared a small speech commemorating the event.

Zak knew that amongst those leaving was Raynar Thul, a young man who had once been an annoyance to the Solo children, but had since—through personal problems they had helped him with—grown to be more of a friend.

Though Zak did not know him, or many of the others leaving, as well as he would have liked, he envied them all. They were beginning a new chapter of their lives, one that he was unsure as to his own readiness.

With what he'd been through recently, he doubted that he would ever be ready.

So, only moments after he had dressed and secured his weapon, he could be found one level down, outside Jaina Solo's room, waiting patiently as she applied the finishing touches to her own appearance for the night. He knew that she'd forgone the application of makeup, which was something he could never understand the need for, but as to the rest, he couldn't even begin to guess.

The door to her room opened beside him and he pushed himself off from the wall and watched as Jaina crossed the threshold and closed it behind her.

She was astounding.

Her hair had been washed and brushed thoroughly until it looked smoother and shinier than he had ever seen it for as long as he'd known her. It was gathered into a double spiral knot at the back of her head, held in place by a single long pin stabbed through the lot. She wore a maroon blouse adorned in gold patterns around the neckline and the hem, sleeveless below the shoulders. Below, she wore a darker blue skirt that flourished outwards down to her feet, slit down the sides from the mid-thigh to reveal the tight, same-coloured leggings she wore beneath and the regulation boots. Her robe hung from her arm casually as she watched him examine her with a smile on her lips, as if she appreciated his reaction.

He raised an eyebrow in response to the boots, which he felt her pluck from his thoughts.

"I refuse to sacrifice comfort for appearance," she replied sternly, the smile still hitched into place. She patted the robes before she flung them over her shoulders and linked her arm under his. "Let's go," she said cheerfully.

* * *

When they arrived in the mess hall on the same level, it was to see that almost everyone else was already there. The many smaller square tables had been pushed together to form one large long table that spanned almost from wall to wall, allowing enough room to pass either side. The chairs had been arranged around the entire thing, with two chairs at either end.

Presently, Luke and Mara Jade Skywalker were seated at one end of the table, with Jacen and Anakin Solo on either side of them. Jacen gave Zak and Jaina a sly wink as they passed him and continued down towards the far end of the table. Keyan Jace and his apprentice, Talesa Valara, were seated off to the side of the other end of the table.

Zak sat down at the end directly opposite Luke Skywalker, who smiled down the table at him as he spoke to his wife, and Jaina sat beside him and instantly struck up a conversation with Tenel Ka and Rebekah Jordan who sat near her, opposite Keyan and Talesa.

Zak turned to the elder Jedi to see him and his apprentice both smiling at him. Both of them were in the usual Jedi tunic and robes, and Zak sensed that they too had their lightsabers with them—and so did Jaina and Mara. Strangely enough, they were the only ones in the entire hall that were armed, as if they alone suspected danger.

"Better to be safe than sorry," Talesa whispered to him. Zak nodded. But her next words made him uneasy. "So really," she started, "what do you remember about what happened?"

_You don't have to answer her_, he heard Jaina say across their private link. _She's just being rude._

"Oh hush, you," Talesa said past Zak to Jaina.

Jaina instantly halted the discussion she was in with Tenel Ka, temporarily, and turned to face Talesa. "There is _no way_ you heard that," she said, her eyes wide. Zak turned from her back to the other Jedi apprentice and saw the cheeky grin on her face.

"No, but it didn't take a genius to work out that it was some kind of admonishment," Talesa responded. "I couldn't exactly hear what it was that you said, but being around the two of you when you're conversing like that is like a deaf person who can't lip read watching a conversation."

Jaina frowned and then turned back to Tenel Ka to resume the conversation, as if the interruption had never occurred. Zak took in a breath before he turned back to the two Jedi.

"Honestly, I don't remember much," Zak responded. He thought about whether or not he should tell them about the memories he _had_ been able to retrieve, but reasoned that an experienced Jedi like Keyan would know already that there was something he wasn't saying. "A few flashes, that's about it; nothing that can give me a full picture of what happened."

"A shame," Talesa said, and got a warning look from her mentor for it. "I apologise. I understand that it would be a very uncomfortable topic for you to discuss—especially in present company."

She shot a look down the long table at Senator Pwoe, who was busy talking to his aide privately, but whom Zak sensed was listening to his words as best he could over the myriad of conversations taking place at the same time along the table.

"I just meant that it's a shame that you can't remember anything for your own sake," Talesa continued.

"It's not just that," Zak said. "I still don't fully understand _why_ I did the things that I have been able to recover. I know that Darth Pravus was a bad person, I knew it from the first moment I met him. But that still wouldn't motivate me to kill him. Get away from him yes; let an experienced, seasoned Jedi Knight or Master deal with him as _they _saw fit, definitely. But I would never have expected myself to turn around and seek his demise for myself. That's just not me. It's the act of a darksider. I plan to become a Jedi, not a person like that."

"We all have our darker impulses, young master," Keyan said gently. "It is part of living and breathing and being human … or whatever you happen to be. As with all things, there can be no light without darkness. So it is the same with the person. What defines us is not what happens to us, but what we do to strive to overcome those happenings, the ways in which we react to move past and correct any damage which may have resulted.

"From what I understand, young man, you had no say in any of the things you did. You were manipulated beyond your will to see, and far beyond your will to stop. How can you be held accountable for the crimes that you committed if you would not have committed them had you had a choice?"

"But those things—" Something sparked Zak's attention and he stopped himself and turned to the entrance to see that Tash had just entered the main hall.

She was dressed in a dark blue top and matching pants, buttoned and tucked in all the right places, the collar turned down around her neck.

She paid him no mind, did not even glance his way, before finding an empty seat between Wanom Catoxle and Raynar Thul and seating herself gracefully into it. Despite Jaina's assurances of late that Tash would come around, and the fact that he and Jaina were on good terms once more, there was no progress on that front.

It saddened him, and Keyan must have felt that sadness, because Zak felt a comforting hand upon his left shoulder and turned to see the sympathetic gaze of both him and his apprentice as they stared back at him.

"Those things were done by my hands, by my mind, using my body," Zak pleaded quietly, ignoring Jaina's calming intrusion into his mind. "How can I not blame myself for the damage that is caused by that?"

"One must seek to redeem ones faults," Talesa offered. "It's entirely possible that your sister has already made the decision to forgive you. But she can still sense the doubt and the guilt and the self loathing within you. How can you expect her to approach you to tell you she still loves you when she knows you carry such a low opinion of yourself and consider yourself so unworthy of that love?"

"Isn't it her job as my sister to stand by my side and berate me for such opinions?" Zak countered. "To remind me of what worth she thinks I have?"

"It is," Keyan said with a nod. Zak again felt Jaina's persistent probing and he allowed her to cross the link into his thoughts. "But she is waiting until you think you are ready. You've made no outward attempt to talk to her; you've waited for her to come to you, assuming the same thing—that she is similarly unprepared to talk.

"Search your feelings, Zak. Search hers, if you dare."

Zak glanced down the table at his sister to see her talking to Raynar, but looking down the table at him. Her gaze was cold, but it was a false coldness she presented, as if a dare for him to cross the bridge between them first, just as Keyan Jace had hinted.

He remembered the way he'd reacted when Jaina had decided to speak to him again—he'd allowed his stubbornness and his disappointment in her to surface in his words, berating her at once before even getting to the fact that he wanted to fix things.

"I can't do that to her," Zak said, still looking at Tash, who, at his words, averted her eyes. Zak turned to look at Keyan again to see the mild disappointment and understanding on the older Jedi's features. "Not after all we've been through together. Not after all she's been there for me through."

"Then you are not yet ready, and she knows this."

"She will wait," Talesa said with the spark of cheer.

Zak nodded and looked down the table again at Tash to see if she was looking back, but she wasn't. He sighed, resigning himself to the fact that, for now, he and Tash were still estranged.

"So …" Keyan started suddenly, drawing Zak away from his thoughts. "Where is this young lady you assured us that we would get to meet?"

Zak's thoughts returned to the conversation between Allina and Alitha, but he was careful to shield the memory from everyone else, including Jaina. All he had was suspicions. If he was wrong about her, then only he would have anything to explain. Only her trust in him would be damaged, rather than her trust in the Jedi.

"I suspect that she's getting ready to join us," he replied casually. "You know how women can be."

Jaina stood on his foot hard, but did not cease the stream of conversation between her, Rebekah and Tenel Ka to admonish him for his comment. He winced at the pain.

"Vindictive?" Talesa offered with a smile.

The food arrived a moment later, with serving droids laying platters of dishes from all over known space down the centre of the long table and arranging plates, glasses and cutlery in front of each seat around the table. When they were done, they retreated back to the kitchens to wait until called for.

Luke Skywalker stood up at that moment, and Zak realised then that it was about time for his speech to both the visitors and the soon-to-be departed, and Allina still had not shown.

"This isn't right," Zak muttered to himself, drawing Jaina's attention beside him. She tensed up, reached beneath her robe for the lightsaber that lay hidden in a side pocket. He remained motionless and waited as Skywalker opened his mouth to speak.

Then, as if waiting for Luke to be in such a vulnerable position, the double-doors on the left side of the room were flung open and Allina stormed in, a single lightsaber in her hand and lit. But she wasn't alone.

Behind her, a squad of white-armoured Imperial stormtroopers marched into the room, taking positions along the walls and training blasters on everyone at the table.


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter 14**

Tash Arranda certainly didn't waste a second. If there was anything she'd learned in the past year, it was exactly how hostile a situation could get when least expected.

She was up and had her lightsaber in her hands and at the ready in an instant, the silver-white blade held high in a defensive stance as she eyed the young woman at the entrance with distrust and distaste

She wasn't the only one on her feet. Everyone at the table had risen at the girl's arrival, and a dismal number of them were armed.

To her left, she saw the violet of Jaina's lightsaber and beside her, the red blades of her brother's own double-bladed weapon as well as the blue and green blades of the visiting Jedi Knight and his apprentice respectively. Mara, far to her right on the other end of the table, brandished her own lightsaber as well, purple in colour and held in a high defensive position as she eyed a nearby segment of the stormtrooper lining up along the walls.

Luke, who had stood ahead of the girl's abrupt and controversial arrival to speak to those gathered in the mess hall, had turned to face the intruder, and the look he presented her with was of disappointment and sadness, rather than anger and betrayal.

Tash, of course, had heard about the girl before. For the past few days, she had been the talk of the Praxeum—the surprise visitor who'd come in search of Zak, though the reasons for which were shrouded in mystery and rumour.

But she had never come across the girl for those days she'd been a guest of the facility. Not once had she passed her in the halls, or seen her across the mess during meals, or outside in the courtyard.

Seeing her now only caught her off guard. She hadn't been expecting this girl to look so familiar to her. She looked like the woman she and Zak had befriended on Sullust almost three decades ago, with subtle hints of other lineages she couldn't exactly peg, but looked just as familiar to her.

Was she related to Alitha somehow? Tash could only assume so, as the similarities were so many that it couldn't be a simple coincidence.

"Allina," Luke started calmly. Even the name was so much similar. "What is the meaning of this?" Like he looked, he didn't sound angry with the girl at all; merely disappointed.

The young girl glared at him, but didn't reply at once. Her eyes scanned the table, passing Tash entirely until they came to rest on Zak, whose back was currently turned from her as he too kept his eyes on a segment of white-clad stormtroopers.

The beginnings of a smile twitched at the corners of Allina's mouth, but she forced it away before it could make itself known to all. Instead, she drew a _second_ lightsaber from her belt, and clicked the weapon to life, holding it up alongside the first and baring her perfectly even teeth at Luke Skywalker.

"Under sovereign law, you are all now prisoners of the Second Imperium," she said clearly and loudly for all to hear. "Those of you that are armed will kindly hand over your weapons at once and without a fuss and you will all be escorted outside. Failure to comply would be unwise."

Her gaze returned to Zak, and softened just a little. Tash looked from one to the other, and something struck her that she hadn't noticed in her initial inspection.

Did she really have Zak's youthful look, or was she just imagining it. And were those her mother's dazzling sapphire eyes?

No! It couldn't be?

"Please," the girl said while looking at Zak. "We don't have to do it like this. You can be smart—you can all be smart— and lower your weapons. No one will be hurt. On that you have my promise."

"Your words cannot be taken at face value," Zak hissed back, though he did not turn to face her as his lightsaber hilt spun through his fingers and came to rest in his palm behind his back, one blade pointed upwards towards his opposite shoulder. "Not after you deceived us about the nature of your visit, and then spring this on us."

"You are far outnumbered," the girl replied coldly. "And I _have_ authorised the use of deadly force should you refuse to comply with my request to disarm."

Zak's reply was cold and bitter, and it made Tash shudder at the memory of the last time she'd heard him speak in such tones. "You don't understand, Allina; we will _not_ surrender."

"So be it," the girl replied. "You may shoot to kill," she started, pointing to Zak, "but leave that one alive for me."

"Yes, Princess," the muffled reply of the trooper nearest her replied.

Tash tensed just as Luke shouted for everyone that was unarmed to get down.

The troopers opened fire as one and Tash, Zak, Jaina, Mara and the two visiting Jedi intercepted the blaster fire as it bore down on them, shifting side to side to cover all of those that were unarmed.

Tash reached out to Jaina as she slashed with her lightsaber and sent the angry-red bolt of a laser up into the ceiling. _We need to get out. This is too confined!_

_Through the kitchens_, Jaina's thoughts echoed back. Tash knew that the thought had gone out to all of the others as well and she leapt over the table to intercept more blaster fire as those around her started to crawl and shuffle along the wall toward the door leading to the kitchens, using the table as a shield.

The girl, Allina, decided to include herself in the assault then, and jumped forward towards Tash with both of her lightsabers swinging. Tash stepped forward to meet her, but felt something grab her around the middle and yank her to the side.

When she stopped, she saw that nothing had even touched her, except for the Force, and that her brother had jumped in her place to intercept the blow from the lightsaber in Allina's left hand.

"ZAK!" she screamed, swinging wide to her left to deflect blaster fire from a nearby stormtrooper back to its origin. She stepped past the younger of the two Jedi visitors and between the Republic senator and an oncoming blaster bolt to block it. "Go!" she hissed over her shoulder.

Unfortunately, it was a distraction she didn't need and she felt the hot fire of a lone blaster bolt that made it past her defensive slashes and hit the lower part of her leg. She hissed with the pain, and fought with the Force to block it out as she shifted her weight to the other leg and continued to slash back and forth against the incoming rain of weapons fire.

She reached out with the Force to feel her comrades' progress towards the exit. Most everyone had left now, with Jaina and the older of the two Jedi visitors leading them away from the mess hall to safety. Though, where safety was at this point was something that eluded Tash.

Luke Skywalker had the Republic senator by the arm now, and was leading him and his aides towards the exit while his wife, armed, followed him as far as the door to cover him.

"Tash, go!" Mara Jade Skywalker shouted at her.

She nodded and deflected one last bolt of fire back into the chest of a stormtrooper before she turned and leapt over the table, landing in a roll and coming to her feet in a sprint. She ran past Mara, the weapon in her hand bouncing back and forth with the pump of her arms.

She heard Mara shouting again as she ran by the kitchens and through a second door into the northern corridor of the level.

She looked left and right, and saw no more stormtroopers, but that her comrades had split into two groups and were heading for both sets of lifts. She followed the group heading for the closest lift to her and caught up quickly, turning on the spot to guard from stormtroopers that might try to sneak up on her.

The younger of the visiting Jedi caught up to her moments later, when it was just her and Lowbacca left on that level. Mara, evidently, had gone to the other set of lifts to cover their trek down to the main level.

"Where's Zak?" Tash asked the young woman frantically. "Where's my brother? Is he with Mara?"

"I don't know," she replied calmly. "It's possible he went with her. I'm having a hard time feeling much. It's like some kind of field is blocking my ability to sense things outside that room."

"I know that feeling," Tash exclaimed. "We need to go back!"

She started forward, but the Jedi padawan held out her arm across Tash's chest to stop her, holding her at bay as best she could. Tash struggled against her, to no apparent avail. But she did not give up.

"Tash, don't," the woman said. "Your brother knows not to stay behind in this kind of dangerous. Have faith that he went with the others."

"But you don't know him!" Tash said. Memories of both of his disappearances the previous year were resurfacing and she had to concentrate to banish them to the nether pits of her mind. "He attracts trouble! I have to protect him!"

"I'll go," the woman said. Tash stopped, and looked at her. "Not to sound insulting, but I _am_ far more capable in this exact kind of situation. You should go down with the others."

"I have to see if he's OK," Tash insisted weakly.

"I'll see to it," Talesa replied. "And I'll bring him down to you safe. I promise you."

She dropped her arm back to her side, and waited to see if Tash would try to push past her on her way back to the mess hall. She didn't. Instead, Tash looked into the girl's green eyes and nodded.

"Safe," she said. "Promise me he'll be safe with you. He's the only family I have left."

The Jedi nodded and urged Tash gently into the open lift tube before she turned around and started to walk back towards the mess hall.

The doors closed, and Tash, dispirited but somehow hopeful that Zak was in good hands, shut down her lightsaber and looked up at Lowbacca beside her. The Wookiee, seeming to know how she felt, or that she needed the comfort, put a furry paw on her shoulder and growled what sounded like an assurance.


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter 15**

Zak woke with a throbbing pain in his head, and his connection to the Force cut off.

At first, panic took his thoughts, and he struggled against the bindings keeping him secure to the chair upon which he sat. He hated to be tied up, and he hated even more when someone bashed his head in to do it.

He refused to open his eyes at first, convinced that the past year had actually been nothing more than a bad dream and that he and Jaina were still aboard Darth Pravus's space station. If so, he must have done something incredibly defiant to earn himself this kind of treatment. But it was at least better to know that he had only _dreamt_ of killing the Sith, rather than actually having done it.

Then there was the whole Allina thing. It would have been easier just to assume he'd made her up altogether using memories of people he knew and cobbling them together with a name that sounded something like the woman he knew from many years ago. It would have been nice to know that he was out of his mind, rather than a cold blooded murderer on the fringe of the dark side.

But when he did open his eyes, it was to a darkened room with stone ferrocrete lined walls rather than cold durasteel. The chair he sat on was made of wood, with down-filled cushioning, and the desk that had been pushed upon the wall bore the markings he had come to know so well in his relatively short time here.

He looked around for more signs to confirm that he was where he suspected, and saw a large chunk of ferrocrete and stone was missing from one of the walls, the scorch marks around the missing chunk a little darker than the permeating darkness itself.

He was in Luke Skywalker's office on the top level of the Praxeum. And he was not alone. At least four other people were in the room with him.

It wasn't so much that he could feel them, since he had already realised that he was once again feeling the Force-nullifying effects of Ysalamir. But he could hear the different sets of breathing, albeit muffled as two sets were. Those two had to be stormtroopers, and by the fact that he couldn't _feel_ anything, at least one of them was carrying an Ysalamiri nutrient pack on his back.

The other two, he could only guess at this point, could have been Allina and her mother Alitha. But … no? The second of those two was too shallow for someone who was conscious, too shallow and uneven. So it wasn't Alitha.

But then, who could it have been? Jaina? Tash? Another Jedi?

"You're awake," Allina's voice came from the darkness, in the corner of the room. He heard a click and a light flickered to life from a lamp on the desktop. She turned the lampshade until it shined in his eyes, and he clamped his eyelids shut tightly to keep the searing brightness from blinding him. "Excellent!"


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter 16**

"Though, it took you longer than I'd have expected for you to come around," Allina continued, almost cheerfully, "I'd started to think that the stun setting had been set a little too high."

"Sorry to disappoint," Zak groaned, wriggling against his bonds to see if they would give any.

"Oh, no, no, no, no, no," Allina said, sounding shocked. "Not at all a disappointment. After all, I did say that I didn't want anyone to be hurt. And no one was. Well, maybe except for that one Jedi that caught a blaster to the leg, and your friend here who proved to be a little … difficult to subdue."

Zak's anger flared. He'd seen Tash take a laser hit before she'd retreated with the others. He struggled again against the bonds, and growled at their stubborn lack of cooperation.

Then Allina's last comment registered, and he looked to his right to see a young woman with long red hair limp and unconscious. She was bound to a second chair as she slept off the effects of whatever stunning method had befallen her.

It was Talesa Valara.

Either she had fallen behind, or she'd come back for him. In both cases, her master would no doubt be one of the few that would be eager to return to the upper levels in order to reclaim her.

"What did you do to her?" Zak asked, keeping his eyes locked on her, watching her breathing to ascertain whether or not she was seriously hurt.

"_I_ did nothing," Allina said defensively. "But even after she lost her lightsaber, she still proved a difficult challenge for my men to deal with. Some of them are likely to be sporting some nasty bruises and headaches because of her. A minor price to pay for the prize I've claimed. I've never seen someone take so many stunning bolts at once, though."

Zak continued to stare at the unconscious Valara, squinting and focussing as if hoping that in doing so he would see something he couldn't feel.

Allina seemed to notice his efforts. "She'll live," she replied impatiently.

Zak turned to look at her again, and all trace of impatience was gone. He frowned at the attention seeking attitude he had to put up with from her. She was older than that kind of behaviour. But there was something immature about her demeanour now that she wasn't under scrutiny.

"I suppose that you're going to have a lot of questions that you want to ask," she said with a cheerful smile.

He had one. "Where is she?"

Allina opened her mouth to respond, and then closed it again, realising that he hadn't asked any of the questions that she'd been expecting him to ask. She frowned, not in an angry way, and said; "Who?"

"Alitha, of course," Zak responded as if it were obvious. Allina's face contorted into an expression of befuddlement and Zak sighed. "I overheard you talking to her earlier today. I assumed that the whole 'I'm busy and will join you later' thing was a smokescreen in case someone was listening. So where is she?"

"No smokescreen," Allina replied, clearly taken aback. "She really won't be here for days. Though, by the time she does arrive, you will have all been transported to my ship awaiting her. She has plans for you, Father; plans to become a family again. Wouldn't you want that?"

"I could swear I asked you not to call me that," Zak muttered.

"I don't answer to you. You are my father, and that's the fact of the matter. I won't address you by your name when such a thing is highly inappropriate. Did you call your parents by name? I think not. So do not expect me to act in such a disrespectful manner."

"'Expect you to act in…' MY _GOD_, GIRL!" Zak hung his head. "You've _already_ acted disrespectfully, and dis_honourably_. You came here under false pretences and then attacked us without warning or provocation. And you're an agent of the Imperium, no less."

"I didn't deceive, Father," Allina replied coolly. "I merely withheld some information. I did come here in search of you. If you were indeed listening to my conversation with mother, than you know that my primary reason for accepting this assignment was so that I would get to meet you, and bring you back so that we could be a family."

"Why," Zak started, "oh why, would I want to include myself into a family that worships the dark side, and seeks to control the galaxy?"

"What do you think you are doing?" Allina hissed.

Zak didn't respond, caught off guard, and he watched as the girl closed her eyes for a moment to compose her temper. She smiled, reopened her eyes, and then continued in a calmer voice.

"From what little I've learned of you so far, you seem to have the goal of becoming a Jedi, and the Jedi worship and wield the dark side of the Force! They are but an extending arm of the Rebel Alliance, which seeks to overthrow the Second Imperium so that it can control the galaxy itself. It wants to impose its own will on each and every planet that it touches, forcing the inhabitants of those planets to bend to their laws and their standards. The Rebels annihilate those who refuse to capitulate, those who refuse to surrender their free will and ways of life to serve under their tyranny.

"And you seek to be a part of all of that by becoming a Jedi? You have been _corrupted!_ Can't you see it? Darth Pravus tried to free you from this corruption when he found and reclaimed you. He tried to save you from becoming what he could see to be a threat. Not to him, or my mother, or to the galaxy, but a threat to yourself. He didn't want you to destroy yourself by abandoning the true path in exchange for the delusions and lies of the Jedi and their Rebel cohorts! He wanted to save you from them, and bring you to the light and the just. He wanted you to realise just how special you are."

* * *

"_You don't yet realise just how special you will become, young man," Brakiss said softly beside me as we walked down the long, seemingly endless white corridor._

_ I knew I was being escorted back to my cell—where else would he have taken me after lightsaber training, with such a heavy escort? Jaina had already been assisted to the infirmary for medical attention for a lightsaber wound I'd unintentionally inflicted._

_ My fault … again! I shouldn't have been distracting her with fruitless conversation._

_ "Oh, is that so?" I drawled. "Why don't you enlighten me?"_

_ Brakiss inclined his head toward me, an eyebrow cocked at the tone in my voice. "I do not jest with you, Zak. You will become a great and powerful master of the Force one day. You cannot deny it. It is your ultimate destiny as I have foreseen. There will be no force that will be able to stand against you."_

* * *

The memory faded as quickly as it had surfaced and Zak shook his head to clear his thoughts before he replied.

"He often said that, yes," he admitted. "But nothing that came from his mouth could ever be taken as fact. He would say whatever he thought we would believe that would serve his purposes. Hasn't it struck you as _odd_ that there are hundreds, if not thousands of Jedi across the galaxy, and yet only a _limited_ number of Sith?"

"That's because the Jedi wiped out the Sith Order in the days of the First Rebellion!" Allina hissed. "And I haven't yet been bestowed the title of Sith, so don't make such falsehoods."

She paused, and fiddled with something in her hands that, in the glare of the lamp, Zak could not see. "This is very good craftsmanship," she said after a moment. Zak knew now that she held his lightsaber, and that she was examining it much as he had hers only days previously.

"What's it to you?"

"You are my _father_!" Allina said in a tone that was almost pleading him to understand. "It is _everything_ to me! To know that your skill is as matched as Mother's, or close enough to it, is gratifying. But to be taught under the graces of the Jedi will only stunt you. You will learn only what they want you to learn, and not everything that you _need_ to learn. Why allow such imposed restrictions to slow your advance to greatness when you can delve deep into the Force and unlock all of its secrets?"

"With great power comes great responsibility," Zak pointed out, quoting something that Luke had said to him once. "_And_ great risk."

"Jedi propaganda! The Force is everything! It is life and death. It is wisdom and understanding. It is knowledge and power. It is justice and peace. It is the light and the darkness within each of us that strives for freedom from persecution and judgement."

"You're quoting a skewed interpretation of the code of the Jedi," Zak said testily. "Did you realise that?"

Allina turned to the troopers by the door. "Leave us," she said.

Without a word, the one on the left of the door opened it and both of them left. The door closed behind them almost completely, and Zak listened to the troopers' footsteps fade until finally he could feel everything once more.

On instinct, he reached out to Talesa to truly ascertain her state. She was awake, amazingly, and feigning unconsciousness in order to listen to Allina's speech.

"Ah, how clever," Allina said, as she too sensed this in the Jedi Padawan. She flung out her hand and the chair with Talesa on it slid back quickly on the stone floor and crashed into the wall. Zak felt and heard the back of Talesa's head hit the wall as well, and she yelped.

"Stop it!" Zak snapped. Allina turned to him and reached towards his chair. However, he did not fly backwards as Talesa had. Instead, the chair turned slightly side-on until he once again had sight of the Padawan as well as Allina. "Are you all right?" he asked the Jedi.

"Ugh," Talesa groaned. "Just peachy. Why about you?"

"I'll live. Did Tash and Jaina get away?"

"Silence!" Allina snapped before Telesa could reply. Both of them looked at her.

Zak, however, noticed just now that her eyes were still startlingly blue, and the skin around them was healthy and light, rather than dark and bruised-looking. She'd said that she wasn't a Sith. Looking at her now, he could say that was true. Either that or it was one hell of a cosmetic effect.

But if it was a cosmetic effect of the Force, then her eyes wouldn't have retained the blue when the stormtroopers had been in the room. He realised that they had. Indeed she was not Sith, for the colour change that identified one was a result of having given oneself to the dark side completely.

But he noticed that she still looked a little impatient, a little … angry even; as if something hadn't quite gone to plan. So he reached into her mind, but only as deep as the surface layers, to see if he could find what it was that bothered her so, and he came across it much sooner than he expected to.

"You can't get to them," Zak said with a grin.

He passed the information silently on to Talesa and felt her relief wash over them both. The news that the Imperium's invasion forces hadn't caught up to the escaping Jedi during the escape elated Zak.

Allina and her soldiers, of course, knew where the Jedi were hiding: in the secret—or now not-so-secret—hangar bay below the secondary, underground one. Zak knew, though, that entrance to the hangar was protected by a code that only a few of them knew, and that the code needed to be entered every time the lift was to descend.

He didn't yet know the specifics of a failure to produce the code, but he gathered that if the Imperials could just blast the doors open and cut through the lift floor, they would have done so.

Knowing that Zak knew her discomfort did not help Allina's mood any. Her frustration and impatience ballooned, and an acerbic remark threatened to spew forth from her lips.

Zak held back on commenting on it, but it was evident that Talesa held no such reservations. "Hutt got your tongue?" she said smartly.

Allina lashed out again, flinging her hand in Talesa's direction and sending a stream of electrical current leaping from her fingers and crashing into the Padawan's chest.

Talesa writhed and convulsed in intense pain, but restricted the sound from her mouth to a groan of discomfort that Zak empathised with. He watched as Allina maintained the stream of light for a few seconds before she pulled her hand away and cradled it as if burned.

Zak inspected it as best he could from where he was, and noticed the telltale black scorching on the tips of her fingers down to the first joint. He could only imagine the pain she felt, the pain Talesa felt. He himself could remember only feeling powerful and full of energy when Darth Pravus had used such an attack upon him. His own fingers had been scorched when he'd returned the favour, but he didn't remember pain.

Allina picked something up from a container on the table beside her and Zak saw the flash of an injection syringe's casing under the light from the desk lamp. She plunged the short needle into the top of her hand and depressed the button on the cylinder, which forced the bluish liquid through the needle into her.

Bacta.

"Now," Allina said, sounding breathless. That, Zak knew.

Maintaining such an attack for any length of time was draining, and amounted to a great deal of concentration. Luckily for Zak, he had been energised previous to his own use of the attack, and therefore had much energy with which to use it.

"Can we maintain some form of civility here?" She turned back to Zak. "Now can you see what I'm trying to protect you from, Father? The Jedi are as uncivilised as the Rebels they support."

Talesa groaned from against the wall, and Zak struggled viciously against his bonds, trying desperately to get free so that he could attend to her.

"Do not struggle," Allina told him. "There's no point to it. Those are syren fibre bindings; there isn't much, save a lightsaber, that could do anything to them."

Conveniently, there were four lightsabers in the room with him at the time. Inconveniently, they were all in Allina's possession at the moment. He could have reached for them with the Force, but when he tried, he found that he couldn't _feel_ his hands at all.

"Oh, there's a nutrient frame bolted to the ceiling of the room directly below. While the creature's bubble doesn't encompass you both, it does restrict the Force to the upper part of your bodies in their present placement. You should be proud of me, Father. Haven't I proven my intelligence manyfold, foreseeing every possible outcome and creating a contingency for each?"

"To some degree, yes, you have proven that you have _some_ intelligence," Zak said with the briefest of nods. "But what level of intelligence led you to attack a facility _full_ of Jedi? Where was the logic and sense in that, girl? Tell me, for I can't see it. Can you, Talesa?"

"No," the Padawan rasped weakly. She coughed—a hacking sound from the pits of her lungs—cleared her throat, and tried again. "No sense in that at all. You'd think she would have brought some backup with her. Maybe a full Sith, maybe a couple of Sith. But no; a little girl came alone with her little toy soldiers and invaded the Jedi Praxeum. You spoke of intelligence, girl. Where is it?"

Allina screamed in frustration and flung both hands out at Talesa, renewing her assault much stronger and much more dangerous than the first. Zak watched the sparking and crackling of the electricity as it lanced across the room from Allina's fingertips and crashed heavily against the chest of the Jedi Padawan. He watched as arcs of electricity danced along her chest, up along her neck and down half the length of her arms. He could smell burning fabric, burning flesh.

Talesa cried out in pain, unable to contain the sound much longer, and it echoed within the room, fighting with Allina's frustrated scream for dominance. Zak watched helplessly as Allina continued to assault the Jedi, writhing against his bonds to try and free himself so that he could somehow intervene and save her.

If Allina didn't stop soon, she was going to kill her!

And then she did stop. The last arcs of light danced along Talesa's arms before grounding against the field of anti-Force into nothingness.

Her pained cries died down into moans and whimpers. Patches of her tunic were frayed and scorched, a hole burned right through the fabric in the centre of her chest to reveal the red-raw skin beneath.

Zak ground his teeth together in anger, biting the emotion back as best he could, fighting for the control of himself that he did not want to lose again.

Talesa was not Jaina, nor would she ever be to him as Jaina was, but she was still innocent. Still undeserving of what she had just been put through.

Again, he blamed himself. Again, he had put someone else in danger.

Again, damn it!

He turned to face Allina again, his eyes narrowed dangerously and his nostrils flaring to emphasise the anger boiling beneath the surface.

He knew he was at risk of relapsing, of bringing back the inner Sith he had once claimed to be. But he knew at the same time that if he released his anger again this time, it wouldn't persist. It would die when the source of that anger had been dealt with.

All the same, he was _furious_ that people seemed to have this affect on him. What was wrong with him that first Darth Pravus and now this girl—possibly his daughter!—could bring his rage and his violent tendencies to the surface without seeming to expend any effort to do so?

Allina was leaning heavily against the wall now, breathing hard as she examined her hands thoroughly for the recoiled damage done to them. Zak saw that the original scorching from the initial attack had spread, and that the skin of both hands that was not scorched blackish was red and raw and blistering.

Despite what she had been taught, what she had been told, this girl was not strong enough to possess that kind of power.

She injected both hands heavily with bacta, and then tossed the injector carelessly back into the container on the desk.

"You claim to be my daughter!" Zak hissed dangerously. "No progeny of mine would _ever_ do that to someone! No daughter of mine would _ever_ give in to her temper such as you have and inflict pain on an innocent like you have now done _twice_! Even if you believe that the Sith are the soldiers of goodness—a Sith _masters_ her emotions!"

Talesa's breathing was slow and uneven once more, and when it didn't pick up even a fraction, Zak glanced over to her again to see that she was unconscious once more; her head limp with her chin pressed into her chest.

Allina took a steadying breath and then pushed herself away from the wall.

"You're not ready for that kind of power, Allina," Zak said pointedly. "Look at your hands. Look at them! You've seen the damage that kind of power is doing to you. You shouldn't be trying to use power that you cannot control, that you cannot sustain."

"Mother says it gets easier with practice," she responded flatly, not sounding as exhausted as she looked. "Pain is how we learn, pain is how we grow. Pain makes us stronger. The more I practice, the more I learn to control it, and stop the recoil from happening. Don't you see the kind of power that you can have too, if you came with me? Mother could help you unlock the potential within you so that you too can do this."

"I've already wielded such power before, child," Zak said patronisingly. "And it's not an experience I care to repeat, if it can be helped. That kind of power will corrupt you, Allina. It will destroy you. Can't you see that?"

"Why are you being so stubborn?" she screeched. "I'm offering you the chance to come with me. I want to be a family! I want to have my mother and my father with me as I grow and learn and become stronger! Is that so wrong? Is that such a selfish desire; to want a family? Why can't I have what I want? Why _shouldn't_ I have what I want? I've been a good girl! I've followed the rules! I've done everything that's been expected of me!"

"You're a spoilt brat!" Zak snapped, repeating words that his own mother and father had used on either him or Tash whenever one of them had acted like this. "'Me, me, me, me—I want, I want, give me, give me, give me."

Allina's nostrils flared and Zak braced himself for an assault upon him now, but it didn't come. He knew that Allina wouldn't risk it with the current state of her hands. She would wait a few hours until the bacta had done its job before she would try that kind of thing again on either of them.

"You're fifteen years old, girl. Grow up!"

Again, Allina screeched with rage and then stormed over to the door. She flung it open so fiercely that it bounced off the wall and slammed shut on the rebound after she stepped through it.


	17. Chapter 17

**Chapter 17**

It had been seven hours since the invasion had begun. With Zak and Talesa both held prisoner somewhere in the above levels, and all the remaining Jedi—and Senator Pwoe and his aides—in the hidden hangar far below the Praxeum, Jacen had soon found himself feeling helpless. He couldn't help but want to get back to the upper levels; if not to go after Allina and free the two she was holding prisoner, to clear out the Imperial presence and take the Praxeum back.

But he didn't have his lightsaber with him—unlike some people who'd been smart enough, or had enough foresight, to bring theirs to the dinner. It was reasonable to assume the Imperium would be awaiting anyone venturing to the surface, and they would be defended against the Force with Ysalamiri. Any attempt to retrieve the captives was a suicide attempt.

After a couple of hours, the general restless hopelessness coming from everyone had driven the senior Skywalker into action and he and the other adult Jedi had unloaded the recon skiff from the _Recluse_.

Initially, the idea was that while Mara and Keyan Jace were above them in the secondary hangar, Luke and Maru Chidor would take turns piloting the skiff down the easterly escape passage to the surface and scout around the Praxeum's perimeter to investigate the extent of the invasion as well as the chances of venturing to the surface to get Zak and Talesa back.

Jacen and Jaina instantly volunteered; to give them something to distract themselves with. Neither of them wanted to constantly dwell on possibilities of torturous acts Zak and Talesa were being put through. But at the same time, they didn't want to sit around doing nothing.

So hours after the invasion, the Solo twins were on the recon skiff, Jaina behind the controls as they skimmed down the tunnel. Neither of them said a word the entire trip, and Jacen tried many times to read his sister's thoughts so he could find out what was bothering her so. Not that he really needed to. It was plainly obvious what it was.

Zak.

More and more these days he was witnessing the blossoming feelings between the two of them. It was quite clear there was more than a simple friendship between them, even though neither would admit it.

In the time Zak and Jaina had spent together, they'd formed a sort of dependency. They depended on each other for company. But their bond had gone much deeper than any bond Jacen had ever felt in others before. The secret one between he and Tenel Ka could not hope to approach its intensity, and the one between his uncle and aunt was likely close but not quite.

He wanted to talk to Jaina about all of this, to somehow reassure her that things would turn out for the better, as they frequently did, and that Zak would be fine. But every time he turned to her, she looked away from him to discourage his attempts. So he kept his mouth shut.

* * *

_I watched from the shadows as Jaina approached him slowly and carefully. Concentrating on so many things at once was going to be taxing for me, but I knew that I could manage it._

_ I had to minimise my presence in the Force so much that it was but a microscopic fragment within me. It wasn't easy, but for Jaina I would do just about anything and would bear just about anything._

_ But at the same time, I had to keep an eye on her. She had this insane notion of _talking_ to Zak, trying to make him realise that he wasn't being himself. I could sympathise with the hope that he'd listen. I'd kind of started to see him as a friend before Brakiss had gotten his grubby hands on him._

_ But the way he was now … I didn't recognise him anymore. I was surprised that Jaina saw any spark of goodness in him._

_ Regardless of Jaina's motives, though, my own presence here was more designed to entrap the self-styled Sith._

_ Huh! Sith._

_ That frightened me just a little, and I wasn't ashamed to admit it. Though Zekk had been corrupted by Brakiss years ago, even _he_ hadn't declared himself a Dark Lord of the Sith. Zak was proving to him and to everyone else that remembered Zekk that he was further along that dark path than Zekk had ever been. The brutality with which he had fought when he had beaten down Aunt Mara and Master Chidor into unconsciousness was worse than any Sith currently on record—worse even that Darth Vader or his predecessor's predecessor, Darth Maul._

_ My hand tightened around the hilt of my lightsaber, which was held at the ready though not yet activated, and I was ready to jump out of my hiding place at a moment's notice to protect my unwisely unarmed sister. Her lightsaber was hanging from my belt. If it came down to a fight, she wasn't going to remain unarmed, that was for sure._

_ She thought that approaching him without a weapon was going to help in her attempt to show him that she meant no harm; that she only wanted to talk to him. Uncle Luke hadn't bought the idea in its entirety, which was why I'd accompanied her, and why I had her lightsaber with me as well as my own. I was a safety net for her, in case her attempt failed and Zak became hostile again._

_ In the centre of the dais near the stairs, Zak turned around so suddenly that the black robe he wore whipped violently through the air, and the hood slipped back to reveal his face. Across the meters of distance between us, I saw the already familiar yellow of his eyes darken and become the liquid brown they were supposed to be._

_ I wasn't fooled. It was only a cosmetic effect so that Jaina wouldn't feel so threatened by him._

_ Jaina said something to Zak then, but it was in quiet tones, and I knew better than to try and probe with the Force and give away my position. I briefly entertained the thought that she had spoken so softly so that I wouldn't hear what it was she had to say._

_ My brow creased into a frustrated glower as Zak replied to my sister's words just as quietly as she had spoken hers to him, and with a genuine smile on his lips no less. Whatever they were talking about, it actually seemed to please him. I knew the difference between a forced smile and a real one. The one that Zak wore now was most definitely genuine. I scoffed silently._

_ Jaina approached Zak slowly, taking each step with care. I knew she was suspicious, maybe not as suspicious as she should have been, though, and I was strongly resisting the urge to leap out there into the space between them and stop her._

_ But they continued to speak quiet words to one another, and I could distinctly feel the telltale signs of a private conversation happening between each of their minds._

_ Both of them were smiling when they were only inches apart, and I tensed when Jaina laughed at something Zak said that I'd missed._

_ Then the most shocking thing happened._

_ Zak leaned forward and pressed his lips against Jaina's!_

_ I almost jumped out from my hiding place right then and there, except that I was restrained and sobered by the realisation that my sister was actually responding to the kiss as if she had expected it._

_ Her body arched and pressed itself against Zak's, and her arms went up and around his neck. She was clearly kissing him back._

_ I was in shock. Honestly._

_ I'd known about the bond the two of them had formed while held captive by Brakiss, and I'd suspected that she felt _something_ for Zak, but I hadn't realised how deeply her feelings ran._

_ The last time I'd felt something like that from her had been during her short fling with Zekk, years ago. But what she was feeling now—judging by what I could see from the passion igniting between her and Zak as they lost themselves in the kiss—was so many magnitudes stronger. I could never have suspected such strong feelings from Jaina for Zak._

_ I was astounded. I couldn't believe it!_

_ I watched, feeling like some kind of sick pervert enjoying a good peepshow, until their lips broke apart and they stood there in each others' arms, looking down into each others' eyes._

* * *

Forcing the memory away, Jacen busied himself with the settings of the spare lightsaber he'd borrowed from the weapons' locker on the _Recluse_. It felt weird in his hand, lighter than he was used to and with a little more bulk than he preferred. He didn't like it, but with his own lightsaber in the above levels in his room—or, likely, now in Allina's possession—it was the best he had access to.

"We're coming up on the exit, Jacen," Jaina said stiffly behind him.

He reached out with the Force, and upon feeling what he expected to feel, walked to the back of the skiff, nearer to his sister. He kept the lightsaber firmly gripped in his left hand and waited, one foot slightly in front of the other and his eyes locked dead ahead, waiting for the signal from Jaina to go.

She gave it to him. "Now," she said.

He went; running flat out from aft to bow.

When his feet touched down together on the forward tip of the skiff's deck, he pushed off gently, doing a single flip in the air until he came down with both feet on the forward rail.

He shoved off with both feet again, hard this time, springing up and forward in the same movement, straight up the vertical climb at the end of the tunnel as Jaina slowed and then stopped at the end to switch to the ascension repulsors.

As he approached the wall, he threw his feet out ahead of him, twisted his body around and pushed off higher still towards the other wall.

Back and forth he went for another two jumps, and on the final jump he pushed himself even higher and shot high into the air above the surface of the moon.

He breathed in the fresh, late night air deeply and looked down to see a large number of stormtroopers around the edge of the passage, working on setting up a winch system to lower groups of them down into the passage to see where it led. He couldn't let it happen.

A few of them stopped to look up at him as he passed them and he flung his hands out in rapid succession, aiming Force attacks into the middle of large clusters of troopers and sending them all flying as the invisible wave hit the ground at their feet.

At the peak of his jump, he raised both hands above his head, calling heavily upon the Living Force before he flung them at another group of stormtroopers. Within seconds, they were fighting vines and branches that began to close in upon them, blasting away with their weapons.

He switched his lightsaber on and used the Force to slow his descent. Landing in a roll that took him straight back onto his feet, he began slashing his borrowed lightsaber back and forth to deal with the stormtroopers he'd landed amongst, cutting through the armour to kill or dismember and Force pushing them backwards down the deep shaft that Jaina was even now halfway up—Jaina would make sure they didn't land on her, he was sure.

Jacen looked around again, reached out with the Force to locate any survivors and found none. Then, calling upon the Living Force once more, he flung his hands out towards the equipment the Imperials had been fussing over, and watched as a myriad of vines and creeps and weeds snaked over and around it until it was barely visible, and then started pulling it down into the ground.

Satisfied with himself, he deactivated the lightsaber in his hand and jumped back down the centre of the wide shaft. Jaina's skiff met him part way and he allowed his legs to bend as he landed to absorb the impact, though it still jarred his spine.

"It's clear," he said to her. She nodded and hit the throttle. The skiff shot upwards the rest of the way and into the night.

* * *

It took them an hour to reach the Praxeum's perimeter on foot. Jacen had yanked a helmet from a stormtrooper's dead body and brought it with them so that if they were contacted about the shaft, they could make something up about why it was no longer important.

Sure enough, halfway to the building, it had come in handy. An officer aboard an orbiting Star Destroyer identified as _Medusa_ had called down to ask for a progress report, and on the genius of Jaina's whispering, Jacen told the man that the shaft was a dead lead, an old escape route that had long since been filled in with ferrocrete.

It wouldn't buy them much time, but Jacen knew that it could be a while before anyone noticed that the squad was missing.

Then he tossed the helmet away and they continued on.

When they got to the Praxeum, what he saw made his stomach churn and growl. A pair of two-legged scout walkers patrolled the Praxeum's perimeter at frequent intervals, and an armoured walker lay dormant, possibly unmanned, along the eastern wall, its armour gleaming in the glow of Yavin's light high above them.

A pair of troopers mounted a couple of parked speeder bikes on the edge of the landing pad and took off at high speed into the trees as the Solos watched. Stormtroopers marched around, into and out of the Praxeum building in groups of ten or thirteen.

A Sentinel-class shuttle was sitting on the landing pad, its cargo ramp lowered and the doors wide open to reveal the cavernous cargo hold. Another two Sentinels sat just as stilly on the courtyard. Each shuttle was guarded by a quartet of Imperial soldiers, a pair at each entrance.

Jaina and Jacen had climbed a tree to watch, and wriggled out along the purple branches until they had the best possible vantage point. Jacen looked over at his sister and gestured for her attention.

_It's going to be a _long_ three hours_, he thought to her.

She rolled her eyes, nodded, and then pursed her lips as she returned her gaze back to the building.


	18. Chapter 18

**Chapter 18**

**FURY OF PALPATINE; **_**NAL HUTTA ORBIT**_

Grand Admiral Farran was disgusted with the young man that stood before her with his head hung in shame.

The fleet had taken heavy losses in decimating the defences surrounding the Hutt homeworld of Nal Hutta, and the Empress herself had gone down to the surface of the swamp world to ensure the final surrender and oversee the initial Imperial installations throughout the sector.

With her sovereign on the surface, Farran had been left in charge of the fleet. For the past hour, she had been seeing the _Fury of Palpatine_'s bridge officers one by one as they delivered the reports of the day for her perusal.

The one she had just been delivered was of a flight accident due to a miscommunication of fighter patrol lanes. The officer that had handed the report to her—a young man in his early twenties who had thus far proven himself capable in other fields—had been in charge of communicating with fighter patrols.

It was his mistake that had led to the loss of three TIE fighters and two of the respective pilots.

Such failure was unacceptable. The Empress would have executed him on the spot the moment she had read it, but Farran was a little more forgiving than the sovereign and therefore willing to offer the young man a chance to explain himself.

"Well?" she said. A moment of silence had passed after her demand of an explanation, and he had not spoken a word; merely continued to gaze at the deck, ashamed of his failure. "I'm waiting, Lieutenant."

He looked up, his face full of fear, and Farran clasped her hands together behind her back. "I–I–I—"

"Back straight, eyes locked," Farran snapped, beginning to slowly circle the man. His body locked up, stiffly straight with his eyes looking ahead of him at the wall of the admiral's commendations and medals. "Chin up, hands to your sides. Now explain yourself!"

The boy gulped heavily. "I cannot, ma'am," he admitted quietly.

"Speak clearly, child!"

"I cannot explain, ma'am," the lieutenant repeated in a louder tone. She smiled slyly as she circled around behind him. "I admit that the mistake was mine, but I do not have a satisfactory reason for it."

"Admission of guilt is the first step to correcting it," Farran said sternly. "Do you know the difference, Lieutenant, between and error and a mistake?"

These were words that she had gleaned from Grand Admiral Thrawn's personal journals, and they were quite true, so she used them whenever it was relevant to the situation.

"Anyone can make an error," she started. "The error does not become a mistake until one refuses to correct it."

"Ma'am, I—"

He didn't get the chance to finish. As Farran passed around the young man's right side, she gripped hold of the cool metal shaft protruding from a sheath at the side of her belt and, quick as a bolt of lightning, plunged the short vibro-blade into his abdomen, just below his ribcage and angled upwards toward his heart. She held it there for a moment, feeling the light buzz through the hilt of the blade as it vibrated inside the young officer, tearing through whatever muscle and tissue and organ it could reach.

He released one final breath, his eyes wide as he looked at his commanding officer with disbelief upon his features. She bore her teeth in disgust as she shoved the blade in deeper; ensuring that it reached his heart.

When he went limp in her arms, she switched off the blade and let go of the body, letting it slump in a lifeless heap to the floor.

With a bored sigh, she slipped her hand into the left pocket of her uniform pants and pulled out a square of cloth made from the finest nerf wool. She folded it in half in her palm and pressed the blade into it, sliding the cloth back and forth to remove the red stain from the otherwise perfect silver-coated blade.

When she was sure it was sufficiently cleaned, and inspected it to be sure, she folded the cloth again back into her pocket and re-sheathed the blade.

Carefully stepping over the body, she walked over to her desk and pressed the transceiver controls on the communications board.

"Bridge; have a cleaning crew report to my quarters immediately." And then she clicked off, turned around, and stared for a moment at the dead lieutenant.

* * *

An hour later, she was in the war room the deck below the main bridge with her second in command, Ronald Tenaha, and the ship's navigator, Que Cho. Both of them were humans from Bastion who were devoutly loyal to the stringency of the original Empire, and by extension the Emperor, and had displayed equal loyalty to the Empress and her Second Imperium.

They had both been chosen as senior members of the _Fury of Palpatine_'s crew by Farran herself after reading reports that they had been responsible for the terrorist bombing of the Tarvon building and several others in the trade, industrial and senate districts of Coruscant several years ago. They were the only two out of a group of ten Imperials that had managed to escape and avoid persecution by the Republic's security forces.

The Empress had summoned the three of them to the war room, and she herself would arrive shortly, to give the next set of orders.

From what Farran had heard, without the defence forces in place, the Hutts were quiet easy to subdue. Since they had limited ground forces protecting them from a planetary assault, and relied heavily on their space-bound forces to keep invaders away, the Empress and her guard had been relatively unchallenged as they walked the streets of one of the industrialised areas of the boggy world. The Empress, no doubt, had gone straight to the den of the ruler of the Hutt clans to speak with them.

And by "speak", Farran knew that her Empress had in fact executed them and installed a governor in place. It was the way she did things. That wasn't to say that Farran found the solution offensive at all, she supported every such act her Empress made without hesitation or reservation.

Those who would stand in the way of the Imperium's right to stabilise the turmoil of the galaxy deserved to be dealt with.

Democracy was a disease. Why the Rebel Alliance had reformed themselves into such a flawed system of government in the first place—bringing back the Republic—was beyond her understanding.

With so many voices crying out their own solutions to problems, crying out to the Senate with their own problems to solve, how could anything ever get done?

When the Empire had first been formed, Palpatine had seen this inevitability. He'd experienced it all as leader of the Old Republic for more than ten years, and had seen the corruption that could sap the life from a democratic galaxy.

With a single leader in charge, there would be no corrupted arm of government. Corruption—if the leader was weak enough to allow themselves to fall prey to it—would be total, affecting the entire government until someone took a stand and replaced them. Decisions would be made quicker, with no need to deliberate with equals, for there would be none.

While as a child, Farran had had her dreams of ruling the galaxy, true. But she had since grown up, since realised that such dreams were just that—dreams. Nevertheless, she was content … no, she was _happy_ to serve faithfully those that had the power, the will, and the passive aura of fear. She would serve her leader faithfully until the day she died. The day she had made that decision, during the reign of Palpatine's Galactic Empire, she convinced herself that her inevitable death would be in battle, in service to whomever she served.

She knew she was one of very few loyalists that felt that way. Another two stood across the conference table from her, whispering amongst themselves in the time they waited for the Empress to arrive.

Farran felt it before she saw. A cold chill slithered up her spine like ice, and she spun to the entrance to see it open to admit the final person for this meeting.

Alitha Palpatine, who Farran had seen had as much—if not more—power than her father, just as much cruelty, had long since proven her right to take up where her father had left off.

Farran had admittedly been unsure about once again serving under the command of a Sith. Many Imperial loyalists did. Palpatine's demise had been tragic to the Empire. Even with the destruction of the second Death Star, the Empire would have continued its hold on the galaxy had the Emperor not been murdered. It made it all the more worse that he was killed by a Skywalker; a man he had corrupted to the will of the dark side of that mystical Force and taken as his own apprentice and most faithful of servants.

That Skywalker's children had then become founding members of the New Republic and the New Jedi Order stung many loyalists, and enraged Farran.

In her view, the entire clan needed to be wiped from existence. She would have done so herself, except that the Skywalkers were Jedi, and she, as a person who had only a commoner's connection to the Force—almost none—wouldn't have stood a chance.

But Alitha had brought together many loyalists secretly, away from the rest of the Imperial Remnant under Admiral Gilad Pallaeon's command, and told them that no military leader, no common admiral, was fit enough to lead a true Imperial faction to victory. Farran took it offensively, but held her tongue for the moment lest she become victim to a Palpatine's wrath.

When the Imperial Remnant signed a peace agreement with the New Republic only a few short years after Grand Admiral Thrawn's campaign, Farran had knelt before Alitha and admitted her doubts, admitted her chagrin at the other woman's claims that a common person, a person with no ability of the Force, was destined for nothing more than mediocrity.

Alitha had responded with the bold statement that she knew of the admiral's reservations of serving again under a Sith. She stated that she was not her father, and that she would not make his mistakes. She had said that the reason she hadn't acted on Farran's doubts was because she had recognised the woman's potential and had decided instead to let her see for herself what Alitha had meant.

The Empress's long blue-black hair flowed around her shoulders as she gracefully stepped around the conference table on Farran's side and looked at each one of them.

A small smile touched her lips, giving her the look of someone who knew something of great importance that she wasn't willing, at least for the present moment to share. Farran recognised the look immediately and scowled.

Contrary to what the look implied, the meaning that lay behind it was actually that she was planning something she knew her subordinates would find disagreeable.

"I sincerely hope you've all had a wonderful day so far," she said cheerfully, and Farran's scowl deepened until she was sure it was visible to all present.

"That's not likely to continue, is it, My Lady?" Farran asked sarcastically. The Empress turned her almost cheerful gaze onto Farran. "May I ask what you have in store for us today?"

"That's why I like you, Sebeka. You read my moods well enough that someone might mistake you for a Force-adept."

Farran snorted in disgust and took a second to examine the attire her Empress had returned from the planet in.

Farran had seen Alitha onto her shuttle to the surface, and at the time she had been in elegant black robes that barely touched the ground she walked upon. Now, she stood before the three officers wearing tight black leathers that hugged her lithe frame, a long black cape clipped to the shoulders of her garments sweeping down behind her to her heels.

She could think of no reason that would have prompted her sovereign to change outfits at such a whim, but she figured that, as the supreme leader, she didn't exactly _need_ a reason to do any of the things she did. And if someone beneath her didn't approve, well that was their own death sentence … in most cases.

"Do you like it?" The Empress asked. Farran shrugged, and she turned to the other two to gauge their responses—which were similar. "Hmm. Perhaps not. But that's beside the point. To the reason I have called you all here; I have new orders for the fleet."

Farran waited, at attention, for the woman to continue. From the corner of her eye, she saw Cho and Tenaha snap to attention, their eyes locked on separate spots on the wall behind the Empress as they too waited.

"I'm not going to like it, am I, your eminence?" Farran asked, absent-mindedly tracing circles in the tabletop.

"A likely prediction," the woman replied. She paused, looking from one to the other across the three of them. "We are going to the Yavin system."

"Excuse me?" Farran was quick to object. Shifting her gaze so that she now looked her leader in the eye—a daring move—she tried desperately to find the joke in her statement.

"What?" Cho and Tenaha blurted at the same time.

"Problem?" the woman said haughtily.

"No, your highness!" Tenaha said meekly, scrambling to recover from the outburst.

"Yes," Farran said, still staring at her Empress.

"I do not require your approval to do as I wish with the fleet, Admiral," the woman said sternly to her. She turned her gaze briefly to the other two. "Return to the bridge and set a course for the Yavin system. Have the fleet engage hyper jumps as soon as it is ready."

"Right away, highness," Tenaha said. Both he and the navigator bowed deeply at the waist, held it for a moment, and then straightened up and left the room.

As soon as the door hissed shut behind them, the Empress turned back to Farran and inclined her head in such a way that the admiral interpreted it as a sign to explain her disapproval with the new order.

"I see no gain in starting against the Jedi at this time," she started carefully. "The child's task surely can't have been completed yet, and she isn't expecting us for another couple of days."

"This is true," Alitha mused.

"For the time being, it would be wise for us to remain here until the transition is complete and we have installed a permanent defence force here to continue to oversee the sector's stability and compliance with Imperium standards and laws."

"What leadership those slugs _had_ has been dealt with, Admiral," the Empress replied calmly. "I've assigned Admiral Styr to govern this sector and the seventh fleet will be arriving from Alzoc Three within the hour to replace us. That fleet will be at the personal discretion of Governor Styr. Until then, the stealth detachment and two of the Interdictors will be remaining behind to prevent any unforeseen events from happening."

Farran took a moment to think about the whole thing. While true that she would also have assigned those ships to guard the system until the seventh fleet's arrival after the flag fleet's departure, she was still uneasy with the prospect of now going to the Yavin system to tackle the Jedi.

If the child's task had been carried out to the fullest by this point, the Jedi facility on Yavin's fourth moon should pose them no threat. The Jedi there would be subdued—either through death or capture—and the system would have been cut off from the Republic altogether.

However, it was too early to say for certain whether the child had completed her assignment. She was still quite young to be given such a vital task, and she had not yet reported in her success.

Perhaps, like the Empress, the child was simply patiently waiting for the right time. Or perhaps she had been discovered and dealt with. Skywalker was not one easily fooled.

"I do have an ulterior motive to this move," the Empress admitted, tearing Farran from her musings. "I would like to witness her progress for myself. We both know what Skywalker is like. He once almost succeeded in converting my last apprentice once, before he'd even known of my existence and was under the influence of the Inquisitorius.

"I took a risk in sending the child to his facility knowing that there was a possibility that he would sense her true intentions and attempt to sway her from her mission—if not him, then one of the other Jedi there. In arriving before the time she expects us to, we can see whether her loyalties remain intact."

"If you are so unsure, why did you send her on this mission?"

"Her final test."

Great, Farran thought.

The Empress smiled as she plucked the thought from Farran's mind, but said nothing at first. "She is the result of a combination of Sith genes—namely those from my family line—and Jedi—namely those from the Arranda family. Her loyalty thus far has been exemplary—"

"Only because we've been manipulating every scrap of information she's ever been provided."

"—but I feel that confronting the nature of the Jedi and seeing their arrogant self importance for herself will be the only way we can be sure that she will not stray off the path," the Empress continued without regard for the interruption.

Farran frowned.

"And how do you expect she will react when she discovers the truth?" Farran challenged. "Thus far you have manipulated her into believing that the New Republic is a rebellion against a benevolent form of government. How do you think she will she react to find out the truth of the old Empire and just how much like it the Imperium is? How is she going to react to the knowledge that this "rebellion" is in fact a democratic governmental structure that ensures that all its member worlds have equal say—the same form of government she currently believes _we_ are trying to establish"

"She knows the kind of power I can give to her, and I know that she craves it. If she adheres to what she thinks she knows, and denies Skywalker the prize of redeeming her, then she'll hate me for the betrayal, but she will also love me for it."

"I'm just saying," Farran replied, "that you're taking a very large, very unnecessary risk with her."

"If she's completed the mission that was assigned to her, Admiral, then she is dispensable. Recall that she is but a means to acquiring the boy, and if she remains loyal—well, she may live a while longer than I'd otherwise allow."

"There are other ways to go about manipulating him too, My Lady. Your last associate's methods were beginning to show merit."

"Until that interfering Skywalker stepped in the way," Alitha hissed, slamming her fist against the tabletop. She stood there for a moment, her fist firmly planted against the table, as Farran watched her compose her temper. She backed away a step and waited.

"Apologies," she said softly. "I didn't mean to push the issue, My Lady."

The other woman took a deep breath, probably to calm herself, and stood up straight. She dropped her hand back to her side and unclenching the fist to flex and stretch her fingers.

"If I didn't value your input, Admiral," she started, "you would already be dead."


	19. Chapter 19

**Chapter 19**

_**SUB-SUBTERRANEAN HANGAR, JEDI PRAXEUM; YAVIN 4**_

Jaina stowed herself away when she and her brother returned to the hangar. Upon their return, they handed the skiff over to Catoxle and Rebekah to take the next surface shift and then they parted ways: Jacen headed straight for their uncle to report everything they had seen topside, and Jaina headed straight for the _Silent Hunter_.

She wanted to be alone for a little while, to think about what they were all going through at the moment. She wanted to think about her lost friends, Zak and Talesa up in the main levels, and she wanted to think about everything that had led to this surprise invasion.

Zak had told her and Jacen that Allina was quite possibly his daughter, that she had been conceived from an illicit affair between Zak and an older woman many years ago. But this girl, Allina, wasn't acting like anyone that could be related to Zak, not at all.

Admittedly, for analysis of the Arranda family, she only had Zak and Tash to go on, and she wasn't willing to count any of Zak's actions from the previous year as his own.

With that in mind, she could only assume that the Arrandas weren't too different from her own family; great people who bad things just kept happening to.

Sitting alone at the communications station of the bridge of the _Hunter_, her thoughts continually wandered to everything that had happened over the past few years.

* * *

_Zak was snarling and growling like an animal with my brothers dragging him ahead of me back down to the subterranean hangar beneath surface level._

_ Jacen and Anakin were both visibly struggling to keep Zak under control between them, fighting his insistent thrashings and demands to be set loose. I knew that neither of them would ever listen while he was in that state, but it was a lucky thing that I kept my thoughts more or less merged with his, prodding random spots of his psyche to keep him too distracted to launch himself into Force-aided freedom._

_ My left arm was bent back slightly as I walked, and I had my hand pressed tightly against the raw, exposed flesh of my lower back. I was in so much pain, but I kept my mouth shut. My pain wasn't important._

_ I knew my bothers disagreed with me on that. They were both outraged and seething, and they'd fussed over me for a few minutes before I'd screamed at them to restrain Zak so that we could move him. When he'd woken halfway back to the hangar, he hadn't seemed repentant in the slightest. That stung me more than I'd ever let on to the boys._

_ We were met halfway across the floor by Uncle Luke, who looked like he was still in a great measure of pain himself. There were weeping gashes and dark bruises on his face and arms, and the exposed parts of his chest, and his left arm was limp beside him, recently dislocated and reinserted._

_ Aunt Mara was across the great chamber on a makeshift bunk bed, deep in a healing trance with a charred gash from a lightsaber down her left leg, just missing the arteries. She too had dark bruises spotted across her face and arms. She was currently being seen to by the re-awoken Zabrak, Maru Chidor, who was holding a wet cloth against her forehead to bring down her temperature—she was fighting an infection, as well, it seemed._

_ I withdrew from Zak's mind, feeling a little nauseous at the extended sensations of being merged with it, and shoved past him, my brothers and Uncle Luke without a word._

_ I felt Zak's eyes cross over to me and bore into my back, and I felt the sense of calm the sight of me seemed to always bring out in him when he was so deranged of late, but I was too hurt—emotionally and physically—at this point to give a kriff. I continued on until I came to Aunt Mara's side. Swapping my lightsaber for the rag in Master Chidor's hand, I dropped to my knees and took her hand between my own, squeezing gently._

_ That was when I heard him speak, and it was again in that distorted tone that told me he'd unlocked the use of his secondary vocal chords and was speaking with both at once._

_ "So; you wanted to go again did you, Skywalker?" I glanced over my shoulder briefly before looking back to Aunt Mara. "All you had to do was extend the invitation, rather than send a squad of goons."_

_ Jaina felt a hot tear escape her and roll down her face to splash against the floor. One of the more frightening aspects of Zak's dive into the dark side had been the change to his voice. The eyes I could have gotten used to, but it was the multi-throated quality of using both sets of vocal chords—a feat usually impossible for even Force-empowered humans—that set me on edge. Every word he spoke seemed echoed, and was etched in the purest of malice, caked in the thickest of evils._

_ I only want to help you, Zak," Uncle Luke replied softly. I believed him._

_ Zak growled dangerously and I turned my head to watch him, to make sure that he didn't try anything I wouldn't be prepared for. "I told you not to call me that! I have cast off that useless name! You will address me henceforth as … _Darth Malonic_!"_

_ "Zak," Uncle Luke insisted. I knew he wasn't trying to mock Zak in any way, but by the stars if he kept that up he was most definitely going to provoke him._

_ There was silence between the two of them, and I continued to watch them as they stared each other down, each with a different look plastered to their features, and each waiting for the other to blink, to submit._

_ Zak's features were filled with nothing save hatred, and anger, and darkness, and a newfound power that he was only just beginning to show and which not one of us, and likely not even himself, truly understood._

_ In Uncle Luke's face, all I could see was the anguish of a repeated failure, and the pain from wounds that he was fighting to stand up straight, and the sorrow of possibly losing another potentially admirable person to the dark side of the Force._

_ Naturally, my own feelings of conflict raged inside of me. Only moments ago, Zak and I had shared such a passionate kiss in the Grand Audience Chamber. It was the first time we had ever given in to the desire, and I found even now that I longed for the moment to repeat itself. Even though I'd known that we weren't alone, that Jacen had come with me and was laying in wait, watching, perhaps shocked at what he was seeing._

_ Those moments had lasted exactly that … moments. Then it had been shattered. Pain surged through my lower back as a reminder._

_ "It looks to me like you're asking for another beating," Zak—I refused to think of him as "Darth" anything—hissed, licking his lips in anticipation. I stood up, releasing Aunt Mara's hand and turning to the left to nod at the Zabrak Jedi Master. He tossed my lightsaber back to me._

_ I took a few indulgent steps forward as Zak struggled again against Jacen and Anakin, and showed signs of possibly breaking free from their grip on his shoulders and forearms._

_ It almost seemed to me that he was even willing to lose his arms to the vicelike grips they had on him if it meant he could get free and assault Uncle Luke again. The damage he'd inflicted on him the first time had been enough, and was healing slowly with our lack of access to bacta treatment._

_ I shuddered to even imagine what further damage Zak might inflict on Uncle Luke if given the chance._

_ I remained mindful of the lightsaber in my hand, and the ones hanging from Jacen's and Anakin's and Uncle Luke's belts. Any one of them could be used by the presently unarmed Zak as a weapon against all of them._

_ His own lightsaber had been left behind in the Grand Audience Chamber, deliberately forgotten for the time being._

_ I had to admit to myself, I was definitely afraid of facing him. It was a combination of the fear that if I managed to secure the upper hand, I wouldn't be able to deal the final blow and end his life, and the fear that if _he_ got the upper hand over _me_, he _would_ do it. Despite how I knew he felt about me, I sensed that he would definitely sacrifice me if I got in the way of whatever goals he'd set for himself and his newfound power._

_ "Zak," I started, taking yet another careful step closer and ignoring the challenging glares of both of my brothers._

_ My friends, my classmates all around the hangar were gathered in clusters around the scene we were creating, looking on in anticipation and fear. Many of them had fought Zak, even if only for mere seconds, during his first capture and frenzied escape from us._

_ Master Chidor had been knocked out with some minor bruises and cuts, and Lowbacca and Tenel Ka and Uncle Luke had all suffered other forms of injury in varying states. Aunt Mara and Raynar Thul had taken the brunt of the assault, trying to double-team him into a corner, and paying the price._

_ But now they all waited to see what would happen between me and Zak._

_ Zak looked at me and I knew he was feeling the affection again. A smile slowly crept over his face. I didn't return it with a smile of my own, and remained ever mindful of all the potential dangers around me should he suddenly snap._

_ "Zak, please just listen to Uncle Luke," I pleaded with him. "Please? Just listen to him. You know he doesn't mean you any harm."_

_ And there it was: the snap. Just like so many other times he'd lain eyes on, or someone had mentioned, Uncle Luke._

_ With every ounce of strength he could bring to bear, he wrenched both of his arms free from Jacen and Anakin's grasp, and flung his hands crossways in front of his chest; his palms opened in either direction._

_ Jacen and Anakin were thrown backwards; launched off their feet and sent flying through the chilled air of the hangar. I watched as my twin soared uncontrolled through the air and slam flat against the far wall, then crossed my gaze to the other side of the chamber to see young Anakin ploughing through a group of my peers and into another wall._

_ Without stopping to think about the ramifications, I flicked on the violet blade of my lightsaber and turned back to Zak._

* * *

Jaina shook the memory from her mind.

The last thing she needed to think about was all the pain that she had endured because of what Zak had been put through. However, with the current situation upon her, she found it hard not to. Everyone was once more in hiding and once more the situation was revolving around Zak in one way or another.

She felt something wet and warm on her face and when she reached up with her left hand, her thumb came away with the tip glistening. Hastily, she wiped away the tears tracking down her cheeks and took a deep breath to steady herself.

"It's hard," a voice came from behind her, startling her.

She gasped as she spun and stood in the same movement to see Tash standing in the entry arch to the bridge of the _Silent Hunter_.

She was wearing a dark blue blouse and matching slacks, separated by a black belt around her middle upon which her lightsaber hung. Her hair, which had been tied back earlier, was loose and messy around her shoulders and her blue eyes sparkled with the exact same pain that Jaina felt.

Without needing to ask what Tash had meant, Jaina said, "I know." She turned back to the controls and began to occupy herself fiddling with them randomly, switching the systems on and off to check viability.

They were all functioning properly, as she knew they would, but she continued to fiddle with the controls, hoping that it would occupy her enough that Tash would leave her be. It didn't work.

"Do you love him?" the other girl asked her suddenly.

Four words. That was all it took: four words in the form of a sentence—four words in the form of a question. A question she wasn't sure she could answer.

She collapsed heavily into the chair, gulping breaths of air as if she had been drowning. Her heart ached to think that all she had been put through these past years.

First Brakiss had turned a good friend of hers, Zekk, to the dark side. Just last year he had done it again through Zak, resulting in his own death as the instrument of Zak's turning. Now, just as she and Zak were beginning to sort out their friendship, just beginning to explore the mutual feelings they had for one another, the Imperium had ruined the chance by choosing that time to invade the Praxeum, and taking Zak hostage once more.

She knew that Tash behind her, though she had spoken less than three words to her brother since his brief indulgence of the dark side, was hurting as much as she was. Despite the disappointment and resentment she felt towards Zak, he was still her brother, and she could not help but to love him.

But Jaina wasn't sure if that's how she felt. She knew she felt strongly for him, and would go above and beyond the norm to ensure his safety and happiness, even if it meant sacrificing her own. However, such commitments were common among Jedi, and common still amongst close friends.

"Jaina?" Tash was at her side now, on her knees looking at Jaina with her face full of worry and her hand resting gently on her friend's shoulder.

Jaina hastily wiped the tears from her eyes and nodded, though she didn't know what she was nodding to. "I'm OK," she lied.

"You know, saying that while crying doesn't typically work," Tash said.

"So sue me," Jaina said with a sniffle. She brought some measure of composure to bear. "I'm acting like a whiney little child, weeping over his disappearance when I haven't in fact known him long."

Tash clicked her tongue at Jaina in a way the darker-haired girl interpreted as amused scolding. "He has that affect on people. You two shared something he and I haven't. While true that we've been in our fair share of scrapes and scuffles and we've gotten ourselves into some tight situations together, we weren't held captive for months at a time with only each other for company."

"But that's just the thing," Jaina replied, looking up into Tash's blue eyes. "I've spent a great deal of time making sure I remain detached from the possibility of such feelings for another arising. It could only interfere with my duties as a Jedi. I can't just go around getting distracted by any attractive guy that comes along."

"Love conquers all."

Jaina groaned in frustration at the word and pushed out of the seat and past her friend. Tash followed her as she stormed down the short corridor to the ship's recreational lounge. There, she stopped, whirled, and glared at her friend.

"That's twice you've accused me of having those feelings," she said harshly. Tash recoiled, backing off a step, but otherwise did not flinch or react. She didn't want to deal with such accusations. Not now. "What makes you so sure that there's more to what we have than just a common kinship?"

"If you could see yourself, Jaina, would you believe that's all that it is?" Tash replied coolly. "Everyone else can see how the two of you look at one another. Do you really want to try and tell me—who knows Zak better than anyone—that there's nothing going on? Come on; don't insult my intelligence_ please_!"

"I'm not—"

"Then answer my question," Tash insisted. "Do you love him?"

"I DON'T KRIFFING KNOW!" Jaina snapped. She stood there for a moment, hands clenched to fists on both sides and shooting daggers at her friend with her eyes. She didn't mean to snap like she had. Calming herself, she turned away from Tash again and took a deep breath. "Sorry."

"It's OK," Tash said, approaching. Jaina tensed as the blonde placed a gentle hand on her shoulder again. "I know how you feel."

Jaina turned her head slightly so that she could just see Tash on the periphery. "If you love him, then why won't you give him the time of day? You know, he talks about you a lot. He misses you."

Tash's hand withdrew so fast it was as if Jaina had slapped it. When Jaina turned to face her, she was looking down at the deck, her face a mask of shame and anguish. She'd struck a nerve, bringing it up, but she knew that it was bound to come up at some point; if not by her, then by someone else that was equally confused with the situation.

"Well?"

Tash looked back up for a second, before sliding down onto the lounge beside her and locking her gaze on a spot on the floor. "I—" She faltered. Jaina waited, looking down on her friend through pitying eyes, waiting for her to explain what it was that stopped her from making amends with Zak.

Zak, who would now possibly not be seen again …

She shook the thought away with a frown and waited.

"After what he did," Tash began tentatively, "to you, I mean … after that, how could you forgive him?"

"I never blamed him," Jaina said quickly and shrugged. Tash looked up at her, trying to understand. "I blamed Brakiss for whatever he did to Zak that caused him to act that way."

"That's just it though," Tash replied. "I never blamed him either. Not for any of it. But every time I look at him, I'm reminded of what we've been through this past year—starting with you and Zak being taken prisoner by that man. Every time I look at him, I can see how much loathing there is beneath the surface, directed inward."

"He doesn't remember it all," Jaina put forth.

"But he remembers enough to hate himself for it," Tash replied just as evenly. "How can I even hope to approach him when he's just going to try and convince me that I should hate him for what we've all been through?"

"I did."

"And he snapped at you."

Jaina cringed. The memory of days ago when she and Zak had finally made amends on the bridge of the _Silent Hunter_, before even Allina's arrival to distract him, was still fresh.

When she'd tried to approach him, initially he'd let his temper get the best of him, scolding her for having not spoken to or made any attempt to reach him in the months since his hospitalisation. At least not that he knew of. She planned to tell him of her frequent visits during his coma, when she was most comfortable seeing him. To have Tash pluck that memory from her felt like a violation on some level, as she was perfectly content to have people believe that Zak had forgiven her without a hitch.

"I'm sorry, I should have minded my own business," Tash said meekly, looking back down at the floor.

"Yes, you should have," Jaina said through tight-pressed lips. She slipped onto the seat near her friend, her hands in her lap. "His temper slipped, is all. Something he's been working to control for a while with Uncle Luke. I don't think there's a chance he'll react like that now."

"Yes, but now I've lost my—"

"Don't you _dare_ finish that sentence," Jaina said dangerously. Tash looked up at her again and a single tear was slowly rolling down her left cheek. Jaina reached out and wiped it away with a warm smile and continued. "We _will_ see him again, OK?"

"See who again?" another voice cut in before Tash could respond.

Both girls looked around to see Jacen stepping out from the lift tube with his hands on his hips, the borrowed lightsaber still hanging to the belt of the suit he'd worn to the celebratory feast.

Jaina frowned disapprovingly at him for the time he had chosen to be a menace and he responded by putting his hands up in a motion of surrender to show he intended to behave himself. Again, her gaze softened as she looked back to Tash.

"Oh," Jacen said. "This is about Zak." He dropped his hands to his side and the cheerful expression dropped from his face, replaced by a pensive one. "Jaina's right, of course."

"Last time there was hope," Tash muttered, not looking at either of them now. "But this time's different."

"How?" Jaina and Jacen both challenged.

"Last time they took him and left. This time they've taken him, _and_ imposed themselves on the entire system. Correct assumption would be that they have a fleet here already, or on the way. They're not just going to leave the rest of us alone. And you heard what _she_ said. She only wanted Zak alive. Where does that leave the rest of us?"

"In a very good position to fight back."

Silence followed. Jacen stood before the girls, his gaze over them at a spot on the wall behind Jaina as if deep in thought, which he likely was. Jaina remained seated perfectly still, looking from Tash, to her brother, to the floor, trying to think of something to break the silence.

She didn't want to think about Tash's negativity about not seeing Zak again. If she allowed herself to get into that frame of mind, then she would grow careless and complacent. She also didn't want to lose Talesa, whom she had grown fond of despite her fondness for baiting her friends with cheeky remarks.

She imagined that Keyan was taking the separation the hardest at the moment, though he was as likely to admit it to anyone—even Talesa—as Coruscant was of growing a jungle.

"What were you after?" she asked her brother, still not looking up.

"Oh, just to say that I just finished giving my report to Uncle Luke about our excursion to the surface. He's going up to Aunt Mara and Master Jace to see about an attack strategy, or something. He was very cryptic about it, to the point of suspicion."

"He knows something we don't, you think?" Jaina asked.

"I'd wager quite heavily on that," Jacen said with a nod. "And I'd wager that whatever it is, Aunt Mara, and Masters Jace and Chidor know as well, or else he wouldn't see the need to consult them."

"Where's Master Chidor now? With the others?"

"He went to catch up with Wanom and Rebekah on the surface. He asked me before leaving to grab you—we're in charge of keeping everyone together while the adults are away."

"Oh, how lovely," Jaina replied sarcastically.


	20. Chapter 20

**Chapter 20**

Talesa blinked her eyes in rapid succession when she woke again; willing them to focus to the harsh light being shined directly them. Despite the enhancements her parents had had done to them during her earliest childhood, they still proved difficult in direct light. After so many years of learning to control when she could shift her fields of vision, she still hadn't quite mastered filtering out such harsh light.

Instead, she groaned and turned her head away before cracking her lids open to see what she was expecting today.

Half of her body tingled as residual energy from the girl's electrical assault on her bled away to nothingness, and her muscles felt weak and even numb in places. She smelt the stale stench of something scorched, but with the light in her face, she couldn't turn her head to see what it was.

She could still _feel_ everything within the room, except for her hands and lower body which she needed if she hoped to gather the Force to break her bonds.

Zak Arranda was fast asleep, bound to a second chair only feet away to her left. She sensed that he was fine, that his "daughter" hadn't inflicted any harm upon him. She wished that the spoilt child would have shown her the same courtesy, and inaudibly cursed her.

Anything outside the room was numbed to her, numbed to the Force. She'd never come across such an effect before, though she wondered if her teacher had. Zak had explained it telepathically as due to the presence of a reptilian creature called an Ysalamiri; some natural defence they had against predators that used the Force to hunt them.

Under other circumstances, Talesa would have revelled at the chance to study the creatures more intimately. She loved to play around with animals, study their social and instinctual habits within their natural environments as well as in ones they were unaccustomed to. It was a hobby her teacher, Keyan, had encouraged when he had recognised it.

He stated that exploring the natures of unevolved, non-sentients would provide a grander insight into the mysticism of the Living Force. She knew that her friend Jacen Solo shared this passion, though he had a much firmer grasp of the Living Force than she, and was sometimes even able to command elements of nature to do his bidding.

She missed the presence of her teacher. They had been together only six years now, but already had formed the kind of bond that master and apprentice usually took a decade to establish.

Their bond went deeper than that though. While not quite the level of psychic that existed between Jaina Solo and her friend Zak Arranda, Talesa and Keyan were able to read each others' thoughts and moods just as well.

It took an experienced eye to recognise that Talesa and Keyan were more than just master and apprentice, and thus far they had managed to keep the knowledge of it secret from the Jedi High Council, lest they be separated before their time. She knew that it would not be feasible to be apprenticed to him indefinitely, but they'd come to a silent agreement that when she attained her knighthood, that they would remain together as partners in many senses, like few Jedi had done throughout recorded ages.

Beside her, she felt Zak stir, and quickly turned her head past the glare of the light to face him.

"Are you OK?" she asked him.

"Just peachy," Zak muttered, shaking his head to clear the bleariness. Talesa stifled the chuckle, remembering that her response had been the same when Allina had thrown her against the wall in response to feigning unconsciousness. "What about you? Any negative effects?"

"A slight tingle," Talesa replied.

"It wasn't me," Zak said quickly; a joke, she recognised. She laughed outwardly this time, and Zak shortly joined in. It lasted only a moment before they composed themselves and Zak's expression grew tight and concerned. "Seriously, though—you're not too badly hurt?"

"Why, Zak," Talesa replied slyly, "I do believe you're spoken for."

Zak blushed a dark scarlet and she giggled at the reaction as he muttered about not meaning his inquiry the way he had mistakenly assumed she'd taken it. He recovered quickly though and gave her a look as if to repeat himself.

"I'm fine," she said coolly. "It's going to take a lot more than a spoilt brat with an unrestrained temper to take this beast down." She nodded her head pointedly and looked around the room.

It was the first time she could ever recall being in Skywalker's office. Though he rarely used it himself during her brief stay at the Praxeum, she was to understand through Zak and Jaina's thoughts that he had made much more heavy use of it recently in his private instruction with Zak. Though, whatever it was they worked on remained a mystery to her, as if they were willing to let her know that much, but no more.

A single portrait hung from the wall to her left, behind Zak, depicting a trio of Jedi Knights. One of them was short and alien; green skinned with long pointed ears, thin wispy white hairs upon a mostly bald scalp, and large, round, brown eyes. The small creature came to just above knee-height of the two humans that flanked him and wore a tunic of dark brown covered by a robe the colour of sand while leaning heavily upon a knobbly cane in front of him.

To the small creature's left was a young man, she guessed in his twenties, with a youthful expression and kind features that bore resemblance to Luke Skywalker. He had shoulder-length hair, loose and wavy around his shoulders and a faint scar down across one eye. He stood side on; his arms folded across his chest with an impatient look pinned to his face. He was dressed in dark maroons and blacks.

On the other side of the small creature, the other human was standing front-on, grasping his wrists in a way that allowed the sleeves of his brown robe come together in the middle. He had a fatherly look about him, kind, wise, powerful, with close cropped light brown hair that was greying and a full ring of facial hair around his mouth that was likewise coloured. All three figures were painted closely together against the background of a rocky, dusty setting she couldn't recognise.

Talesa could only guess the significance of the portrait. Those depicted in it were the first three Jedi that Luke Skywalker had ever met—Jedi Masters Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda, and Jedi Knight-turned-Sith-turned-Jedi, Anakin Skywalker, Luke's father.

She smiled at the picture, and allowed Zak to see it through her eyes, as his current positioning prevented him from doing so himself.

"Beautiful," he said quietly, his eyes closed as he looked through hers. "You know, I never actually took notice of it there before. I suppose there's no need to ask Master Skywalker why he has it."

He opened his eyes, and then his mouth as if he was going to say something more to her, but stopped himself. She reached out to try and get a sense of whatever it was, but she couldn't find it. His eyes were locked on Skywalker's desk in the corner of the room—more accurately, to something sitting atop it.

"What is it?" she asked.

Zak didn't respond right away, and Talesa was about to repeat herself when he thrust the image of a portable holo projector unit into her mind so hard and fast, it was as if it was an emergency that she know.

_You see that projector on the table. When Allina comes for us, keep it on the outermost edge of your mind, as if you're trying to conceal its importance from her. Don't try too hard to keep it from her though._

_Why?_ she queried.

_Explain later_, Zak replied hurriedly.

The door swung open and Allina stood there with her hands on her hips, looking from one to the other as if making up her mind about something. She turned her head and mumbled an order to the nearest stormtrooper, who then rushed off to follow said order, before she stepped into the room. She did not close the door behind her, leaving it wide open.

Talesa got the impression that she wasn't going to be there long, but she outright refused to read the girl's thoughts to find out for sure. She didn't want to touch such darkness after what the girl had done to her thus far. It would probably hurt more than the physical pain had.

"Good news," she said cheerfully, clapping her hands together.

"Oh goody," Talesa drawled. "Let's hear it."

Allina shot her a contemptuous glare and then turned her gaze to Zak. Talesa frowned at the ignorance she was displaying, acting as though Zak were the most important person in the room.

Talesa didn't consider herself vain, not by any standards, and she by far would never have considered herself more important than anyone else, but the instinctually human part of her didn't like being ignored like that.

"You're being transferred up to my ship," Allina continued. She nodded her head to Talesa and continued. "Unfortunately, I only need you, though, so I suppose I can dispense with the waste."

"No," Zak said quietly.

Talesa remembered Zak's instruction and pushed his silent words to the edges of her mind, leaving them barely open for inspection should Allina choose to intrude upon her thoughts. If anything, she wanted it to feel to the girl as though she was desperate to keep something from her, but was weakened from the earlier assault and so couldn't quite manage it.

"No?"

"No," Zak repeated. "If you expect me to show even an _globule_ of cooperation, you'll take us both and she will not be harmed."

"I thought I made it clear that I don't answer to you," Allina said with a sigh. "Not while you're so stubbornly adherent to the dogmatic views of the Jedi and the Rebels. Until you have realised your true calling, and the true nature of the Force, I'm not entirely interested in anything you have to say, and that includes any demands you try to make."

Talesa snorted.

It drew the attention she wanted, and when she felt the none-so-gentle inquisitive probes upon her mind, she made deliberately feeble attempts to close herself off.

It caught the girl's attention, and she turned to face her fully, probing deeper, tearing apart feeble defences Talesa had erected into place half-heartedly.

A true defence could have kept her out for hours, even days, had she put in the effort. But she sensed that Zak was up to something, and he had a reason in mind for wanting Allina to pay close attention to that holo recorder.

Had he known that she was planning now to transport them to the ship? What else could have prompted his suggestion?

She felt Zak's own probes enter her mind, trying to force their way ahead of Allina's to set up blockages and walls. She sensed that the attempt was just as feeble and showy as her own, intended to do nothing more than make Allina more curious about whatever it was she thought they were trying to keep from her.

Then she found it, just as Zak had wanted.

She turned to face the recorder, looking for all the stars like a hungry vornskr carefully eyeing its intended prey.

To Talesa's left, Zak frowned deeply, but she sensed no true annoyance within him. Another affectation, she realised, and she worked to pin a look of frustrated resignation, failure, upon her own features.

Whatever Zak had planned, she hoped that he'd have the chance to tell her before Allina found out that the projector was—as Talesa assumed—worthless.

"Guard!" Allina called out. The remaining trooper on station outside the door walked in, the dark straps over his white shoulder plates giving away the Ysalamiri nutrient pack on his back.

Talesa's senses were cut off and her gaze shifted from feigned resignation to genuine indignation at having the Force stripped away from her again.

"We're leaving. Have one of your men report here on the double and take this aboard one of the shuttles." Allina pointed to the projector. "It possesses highly valuable military intelligence on the Rebels that my mother would very much like to get her hands on."

"Right away, Princess," the trooper said.

He left the room, and when he returned a couple of short minutes later, he was followed by a pair of stormtroopers, neither of which wore nutrient packs on their backs. Talesa frowned again and thrust her chin into the air in defiance as Allina's gaze swept over her and Zak once more.

"Maintain their bonds, but get them out of those chairs," Allina quietly ordered two of the troopers. They both nodded and turned to face the young Jedi. "They're both coming with us."

Perhaps that was the only plan Zak had for the projector—Talesa, as a more experienced Jedi, would have more knowledge of any secret military information than Zak would.

He'd just saved her life.


	21. Chapter 21

**Chapter 21**

Allina was elated as she stood on the edge of the landing pad outside the Jedi facility's main complex.

Her mother would be in the system within a few short days, and she had Zak under control, restrained, detained.

She wanted him to cooperate with her, to see that what she offered him was nothing to thumb his nose at in disgust, and so she acquiesced to his demand that the other Jedi's life be spared.

Besides, she considered, the Jedi was a full Padawan, whereas Zak was a mere trainee. It was entirely possible that she'd know something about whatever information they found on the holo projector, or would be able to access the no doubt encrypted files within it for Allina to analyse for herself.

In truth, she probably wouldn't have killed the young woman anyway. She didn't share her mother's cavalier views regarding the lives of their enemies.

While she believed that her mother, and the Imperium by extension, was doing great things, great and _benevolent_ things, she couldn't agree with her mother on certain issues. One such issue was the lack of regard she had for the lives of the Rebels.

Allina's mother was so unflappable in her goals, by her beliefs, that she would slaughter each and every last Rebel that defied her and the Imperium.

Luckily, she had Allina by her side to temper such gross disregard. Allina always reasoned with her mother that the Rebels could be shown the error of their ways, given the chance, and that, given time to consider the ramifications of what they were trying to do, they could prove to become useful and, more importantly to her mother, loyal citizens once the Imperium consolidated its power.

She'd heard rumours that many star systems were _openly_ loyal to this rebellion, something she could never bring herself to understand.

But the thing that galled her most was that Zak, her father, was so intrinsically stubborn in the belief that all he had been told was true. She couldn't understand why.

He had been born during the reign of her grandfather, Emperor Palpatine, and had lived sixteen years as a citizen of that Empire. Surely, he had seen some of the great things the Emperor had done, the good he was doing to bring the galaxy together as a unified whole?

How could he turn his back on that so readily after only two years living amongst the Rebels?

She watched as Zak and his Jedi companion, whom she had never bothered to learn the name of, were shoved and prodded forward by a half dozen stormtroopers toward the loading ramp of the nearest assault shuttle.

Before he was shoved through the hatch and out of sight, her father looked back at her over his shoulder, shooting her a look she couldn't mistake: contempt, loathing, hatred.

It tore her up inside to think that with all that she was trying to do for him that he felt that way about her. She knew it would all change, with time and patience. And she knew that because of all he had been indoctrinated to believe, that he would resent all she was trying to offer.

But to have his feelings toward her so deeply entrenched at that end of the scale hurt her more than she would ever admit to her mother when they were reunited.

She would take time to herself, she knew, leaving Zak's instruction for her mother to handle until she could face him again. She would have to continue to face him once they were all aboard the _Medusa_ in high orbit. It was her duty to continue to provide her father with the facts until her mother arrived to take over.

And since he seemed to be on such good terms with the Jedi leader, Skywalker, he might even know something of value.

While she knew her mother would expect them both to work at it together, Allina knew that the woman would understand her sorrow and her need for a temporary seclusion. Perhaps she could even request a transport back to Alzoc 3 for some quiet meditation at home, where she had spent so many years growing up under the woman's watchful eye and careful guidance. The chances her mother would allow it weren't good, but she would try nonetheless.

Zak stumbled as a stormtrooper shoved him hard from behind, and bumped into his Jedi companion who looked back at him helplessly, unable to intervene.

Across the landing pad in the courtyard, a lone stormtrooper was boarding another assault shuttle, clutching to his chest the holo projector that Zak and his companion had tried to shield in their thoughts. Though she had been unable to glean the total extent of the projector's hard memory contents, she had sensed in their minds that it had vital information about the Rebels that she sensed Zak didn't want her to see.

She was eager to find out what it was, and she would take great pleasure in viewing its contents in the presence of the two young Jedi so as to emphasise their failure to keep anything from her.

Such a foolish notion.

"Princess," a masked voice came from beside her, breaking her from her gleeful reverie.

She turned her head to see the familiar yellow stripes on the faceplate of the stormtrooper's armour that marked him as a squad leader—one that she knew well—and nodded for him to deliver his report, as per the reason he had come to her.

"All units have been loaded 'board the shuttles, an' the prisoners have been secured in the cargo hold with several nutrient cages to stunt their attempts to use their magic."

"Very good, Commander Corr," she said quietly, turning back to look at the shuttles. The one that Zak had been loaded onto was preparing for takeoff, its loading and boarding ramps locked snugly against the hull of the ship and pressurised steam hissing from ports near the engines. "The projector is undamaged?"

"As per your instructions. I've issued orders that it be delivered to your personal chamber when we return to the ship."

"Have it taken to the detention block instead," Allina said at once. She sensed the confusion within the commander. "I wish to further punish them by allowing them to witness as I take what knowledge they would keep from us."

"Very well, Princess." The trooper paused. Allina sensed uncertainty in the man; the seeds of doubt combined with the wisdom to keep it to himself and the desire to do nothing more than obey whatever orders were given to him.

"Is that all?"

"Are we to leave the armour here, highness?" he asked uncertainly. Allina knew that wasn't what he was uncertain about, not primarily, but it was still another uncertainty that he wished to have addressed. "The transport has already returned to the _Medusa_ an' it'll take some time to have it refuelled and brought back down to retrieve it."

"Load the scout walkers into the shuttle on the far side of the complex, but leave the heavy armour behind," Allina replied confidently. "Contact the _Medusa_ and have the transport return to the surface immediately to obtain it, and leave as small a detachment as possible here on the surface to maintain its security until the transport arrives for it."

"And what 'bout the rest of the Jedi?"

Allina thought about it. "I will not waste my time on such matters. We have what we came for; the others can rot in their tomb for all I care."

"We're just gonna leave them?"

"Of course not." Allina thumbed her chin in thought, and then smiled. "After the armour's been retrieved, we're going to hit them from orbit. Carry out your orders, Commander."


	22. Chapter 22

**Chapter 22**

_**YAVIN**_

Unknown to Allina, or to the inhabitants of the Praxeum on the surface of the jungle moon of Yavin IV, quiet, but violent, storms were brewing beneath the outer layers of gas.

The gas giant of Yavin stirred.


	23. Chapter 23

**Chapter 23**

**SILENT HUNTER, **_**SUB-SUBTERRANEAN HANGAR, JEDI PRAXEUM; YAVIN 4**_

Jaina worked swiftly as her fingers flew back and forth across the control board of the _Silent Hunter_'s helm. Seated beside her to the left, in front of the ship's navigations, was her younger brother Anakin. Both of them worked fast to enable to ship's start-up systems and pre-flight checklists.

Only an hour ago, scouts from the surface had reported an Imperial retreat. Stormtroopers were boarding the shuttles, speeder bikes and scout walkers were being packed away, and they'd overheard communications between the Imperials on the ground and the ones in orbit about a request for a larger transport vessel for the armoured walker.

Though no one else knew for sure what the reasons behind the retreat were, Jaina and her friends knew exactly what it was.

Allina had taken Zak and Talesa up to her orbiting ship, and was either planning to leave with them to rendezvous with her mother somewhere out in space where they would never find them, or she was preparing to orbitally bombard the Praxeum. Jaina wouldn't have put the depraved act beyond her capabilities.

Already, she had convinced herself that even if the girl proved genetically to be Zak's daughter, her mind had been so warped and twisted by her mother—or other forces—that she was nothing of the sort.

Zak would be—and probably _was_—sick, disgusted with the girl for her acts thus far. She couldn't feel his emotions, as if he was surrounded heavily by Ysalamiri to prevent him from reaching out, calling for help, but Jaina felt she knew him that much at least.

So with the Imperial retreat, her uncle and aunt had issued an evacuation decree.

Many of her peers and the Republic Senator had boarded the Sentinel-class shuttle that had been found in the ruins of an old Rebel cruiser a year ago and since patched up and repaired by Zak's friends during his incarceration. Though there was more than enough room aboard the shuttle for them all, Jaina wasn't willing to leave the _Silent Hunter_ behind where the Imperials could one day get their hands on it, or obliterate it altogether.

Anakin, her uncle Luke and Tash had raced aboard the shuttle with her while Jacen had rashly taken advantage of the complete lack of Imperial soldiers in the up-levels and dashed off on some unknown mission.

Jaina would wait for him, of course, but she dearly hoped that he wouldn't be too long in whatever it was that he was doing.

"What is that boy doing?" Luke hissed under his breath from the centre seat of the _Hunter_'s bridge. He had been gone an hour now, and the _Recluse_ was already hovering in the hangar behind the _Hunter_, waiting for Luke's signal to depart.

Jaina reached out to him above with her thoughts, trying to find out what he was doing. But he was no longer up there. She could see him ahead of them now, hitting the manual controls beside the lift tube entry that would lock the tubes, burning out its mechanisms so that it wouldn't function again.

Under his other arm, he carried a wooden crate, inside which she saw the numerous, uniquely cylindrical designs of dozens of lightsabers. Atop the pile sat the one he had borrowed from the weapons locker on the _Recluse_, while his own swung comfortably from his belt as he dashed across to the _Hunter_'s boarding ramp and climbed aboard.

Jaina heard the clang far below of the ramp snapping shut and the seals clamping secure and adjusted the controls to activate the ship's repulsors so that the landing gear could be retracted.

"Where's the comm. station?" Luke asked her.

"Over there," Jaina replied, not looking up from the controls in front of her but pointing over to the control boards to the rear of the deck on the starboard side. "But there's a secondary access through the right-side armrest of the chair you're in."

"Too complicated and not enough time," Luke mumbled, jumping out of the comfortable seat and dashing across the deck to the control boards she pointed out.

He hastily punched in a few commands as Jaina set about retracting the landing struts and looked over at her brother, Anakin, for confirmation of the pre-flight. "_Recluse_, this is Luke. Get the hell out of here. Head for the far side of Yavin and maintain a high orbit. We'll be right behind you."

"_You better be,_" Jaina's aunt, Mara, replied. Jaina smirked at the grumbled tone.

The comm. line was shut and Jaina rotated the ship around to see the _Recluse_ speeding down the huge shaft taking it away from the Praxeum.

There was a heaving disturbance of footsteps and gasping breath as Jaina stepped onto the bridge and then slumped, exhausted from his flat-out run, into the nearest seat.

"That was close," he said.

"You went back for your lightsaber?" Luke asked sceptically.

"Yep," Jacen replied.

"Jacen—"

"I know," Jacen replied. "It was very irresponsible of me to do something so rash. But I figured since there were no Imps on the surface anymore, there was no one there to stop me. And I wasn't just going to get mine and leave everyone else's here, was I? What kind of selfish person would I be if I did that?"

"How did you know the Imps hadn't taken them?" Anakin replied mockingly.

"Didn't," Jacen replied. "Oh!"

He disappeared from the deck for a moment and in that moment, the ship lurched forward, internal stabilisers on full so that no one inside the ship would feel the sudden movement. Jaina carefully piloted the _Silent Hunter_ down the narrow passage at the highest speed she was willing to risk, given that it was a dead stop and sudden rise at the end.

When Jacen returned, Jaina looked over her shoulder at him to see him hand over Luke Skywalker's lightsaber and then walk across towards the front of the deck to give their younger brother his.

Tash and Jaina already had theirs, and had had them since the debacle that was the feast. He turned and returned to the back of the deck, where he seated himself at the engineering station and played with a few switches.

"Jacen, portside weapons, if you please," Jaina said coolly, slamming on the ship's brakes when they reached the end of the tunnel and spinning slowly on the x-axis so that they shoot nose-first out of the rise.

"On it," her twin replied hastily, jumping out of his seat and seating himself behind another console.


	24. Chapter 24

**Chapter 24**

_**BRIDGE, IMPERIUM STAR DESTROYER:**_** MEDUSA**_**; HIGH ORBIT OVER YAVIN 4**_

Captain Samar Dennison waited patiently at the front of the command deck. There was nothing more he loved to do during the moments on duty when there was no need for urgency, no emergency situations or scheduled staff meetings to attend to, than to look out through the forward view of the deck at the elongated point of the magnificent ship.

That _he_ commanded.

Not some spoilt brat assigned to take his ship to Yavin 4 by his Empress. He had only followed his orders because they had come from the Empress herself, not from the child.

He would never accept her orders unless so ordered from their monarch. He had been in command of the _Medusa_ for seven years now, since its construction at the Imperium's ship yards in orbit of Alzoc 3, and in that time, not once had he done anything to displease his leader, not once had he ever doubted her motives or disobeyed a direct order. And that was how things would always be.

His dark skin and hair were perfect, not a blemish, not a single strand of grey or a wrinkle of stress. He wore the grey of his station well, with a few commendations awarded him by Grand Admiral Farran.

So far, the Yavin mission had proved itself to be a success; proving once more that his Empress' wisdom was infallibly incontrovertible.

With the rest of the third fleet with him, he could have erected a fully-functional blockade of the Yavin system. The commerce station orbiting the gas giant would never have had the forewarning to evacuate. But that he had been sent alone only solidified his belief that his Empress had wanted them to escape for reasons only she could understand.

He was OK with that. He didn't want to understand, he just wanted to serve well. In that respect, he was much dissimilar to the Grand Admiral that served as the Empress' right hand woman.

Grand Admiral Farran never showed the typical restraint in questioning decisions their leader made that most of the Imperium's officers did. She did so for the sole purpose in understanding the Empress's plans more than she initially did, to grasp the complexities that had eluded her the first time.

Emperor Palpatine would never have approved of such an officer. Even Lord Vader had never questioned his master's orders. Perhaps the Empress, though related to that ill-fated galactic ruler, was much removed from him on a personality line.

Still, Dennison didn't want to push his luck. She may tolerate such questioning from her second in command, but most likely not from any of his station or worth.

And still, he was OK with it.

"Captain," Lieutenant Monroe called from the tactical sensors station at the mid-deck.

Torn from the beautiful sight before him, Dennison turned around sharply and strode evenly down the walkway in the centre of the deck to the mid-point, hands clasped behind his back and eyes hard and intimidating.

"Yes, Lieutenant?"

"Sensor contact," Monroe replied coolly, looking up at his commanding officer from the station pit. "Sensors are picking up two small ships, approaching orbital altitude fast."

"Where are they coming from? All of our shuttles are aboard, are they not?"

"All transports _are_ aboard, sir," the lieutenant replied, sounding confused. "One of the incoming ships is an assault shuttle with Imperial ident. But my boards are showing that the ident hasn't been valid for the past twenty years."

"What about the other?" Dennison wasn't too concerned with a long-lost assault shuttle. Such things were no threat to his ship. However, a TIE detail would have to be dispatched to escort it on board.

"A personal transport that was reported stolen from Dusk Station shortly before it's destruction last year."

Dennison unclasped his hands, the only way he would allow himself to express any form of surprise.

He raised an eyebrow. That particular transport had been the personal property of the Empress, on loan to her associate, a frightening man with ugly scars marring an otherwise handsome visage. According to Grand Admiral Desal's reports after the debacle, the ship had been stolen by the two Jedi youngsters that had been held captive by the Empress's associate, and then flown straight to Coruscant.

"Sound battle alert conditions. All crew to report to combat stations immediately," he ordered sharply to other officers without looking at them.

He reached up and touched a finger to his lips in thought. "Detach three squadrons of TIE fighters to intercept _both_ ships. Bring them both aboard. I want them intact. No mistakes."


	25. Chapter 25

**Chapter 25**

**SILENT HUNTER; **_**HIGH ORBIT OVER YAVIN 4**_

Jaina made sure that there was plenty of room between the _Silent Hunter_ and the _Recluse_.

Though she could easily fly circles around the much slower transport shuttle, she resisted the urge to show off when the situation was so dire.

Jacen and Luke had taken control of the port and starboard weapons systems, while Tash sat by the comm. boards waiting to be told what she could do to help, if anything. Jaina and Anakin had the harder job.

They hadn't managed to keep their escape secret from the Imperials for as long as she'd hoped, and only moments after escaping the uppermost atmospheric layers of Yavin 4, the sensor station next to Jacen had gone off and alerted them all to the pursuit of a great many Imperial fighters inbound from the Star Destroyer locked into geosynchronous orbit above the Praxeum.

So, with the slower speed of the Sentinel, Jaina and Anakin had been forced to deliberately lag the _Hunter_'s own top speed to draw the attention of the oncoming fighters.

* * *

When the fighters came upon them, Jacen and Luke didn't hesitate. At Jaina's prompting, Tash temporarily ducked over to the special operations controls and flicked the _Silent Hunter_'s shields to life, repelling and absorbing much of the incoming laser fire.

Luke and Jacen took the weapons systems and turned them into a heavy barrage. While most of the weapons pods were set to automatic targeting and blasting, they each controlled a couple of pods each, targeting fighters manually and either damaging or destroying them.

Jaina slammed a command on the controls, and the ship dipped down under the out of control spin of a damaged TIE and continued to lumber on.

* * *

"Just one more minute," Luke muttered under his breath. Jaina ignored it. She didn't need to be worried about whatever it was that he was expecting when she was occupied in keeping the ship on a more or less straight line course away from the pursuing Star Destroyer.

The destroyer itself had opened up with its own batteries; great big lances of blue ion fire that streaked out across the space between it and the much smaller transports, attempting to disable one or both of them and force them out of options.

Jaina was a good pilot, and in the highly manoeuvrable ship that she was flying, she was able to dodge each and every arc of ion energy fired at her.

The Sentinel wasn't so lucky. Though piloted by her aunt, Mara—who was by no means an unskilled pilot—it was more sluggish, less manoeuvrable. A single ion blast struck its rear-quarter and the engines began to flicker wildly. When the engines died entirely, and the ship began to drift, a cold fear struck Jaina to the core.

"Not good, not good, not good," Jaina chanted to herself.

"_Recluse_, this is Luke," Luke said behind her, reaching out with the Force to open the comm. channel between them. "Mara, how bad is it?" There was no response from the other ship, which was now even beginning to drift entirely off its course and down towards the huge gas giant. "Mara? Mara, you're getting dangerously close to that giant."

_Aunt Mara!_ Jaina called out with her mind.

_I know,_ the response came; heated, annoyed. _I'm working on it. Tell your uncle to be quiet for a moment_.

Jaina turned to look at him and saw on his face that he must have heard it because he was frowning with worry and indignation, his lips pressed together tightly and his face growing paler by the second.

A sudden jolt sent her knees slamming into the underside of the control boards and she swore and turned around again to look at her boards. Tash called out from behind her.

"Shields are out. That ion burst shorted out the emitters, so unless you have secondaries …" She trailed off and Jaina got the hint. Another distraction like that one would result in the complete system shutdown of the _Hunter_ as ionised energy surged through the systems and fried them all out.

She didn't want that to happen. So instead, she called upon the Force to surround her, blocking out all unnecessary distractions, barring them from her thoughts—which, sadly, included thoughts of Zak aboard that ship. She barely heard the whooping cheer of Jacen as he blasted a group of TIEs away that were trying to target the engine pods to the rear of the ship.

"Anakin, go down to the engineering deck and see what you can do about bypassing the shields through one of the lesser systems," she said. Anakin left without even acknowledging her. "Jacen, put those weapons on automatic and come take over Anakin's spot!"

"On it," Jacen said again, slipping into Anakin's seat seconds later.

And then a thought struck Jaina, and she smiled when she considered just how good a chance it had of working. "Hang on tight everyone! I have an idea," she said suddenly as she yanked the yoke over to the right hard to pull the ship into a tight turn back towards the pursuers.

* * *

In less than a minute, she'd swung the ship right around and pushed it to its top acceleration, speeding like a bullet towards the large round generators sitting so vulnerably atop the command and control module of the Star Destroyer.

None of the others doubted her plan, if anyone had yet caught onto it, though she sensed cold panic beginning to fill Tash's thoughts as they drew closer and closer to the immense ship.

Blue ion fire surged at them from both sides of the destroyer, and she dodged left and right to avoid each and every one of them. Anakin would still need a couple more minutes, if he was even able to get the shields back up at all.

Jacen helped her plot the course, while the ship's weapons pods continued to fire at the swarm of TIE fighters trying to shoot out their main systems. Their numbers were dropping fast, but Jaina wasn't entirely sure it was fast enough.

She was lucky her manoeuvre worked.

Seconds before impacting the spherical generator, she swerved to the right and circled at top speed around the structure, slipping between the both of the massive globes and looping down under the command module to come up behind the destroyer.

A single ion cannon battery continued to fire at them, the only one able to target them as they spun back around.

"Uncle Luke, proton torpedoes."

Jaina watched as many of the swarming TIEs, trying to maintain formation while following the _Hunter_'s intricately tight path, slammed hard into the unshielded generators, destroying support struts and structural braces around the hardened durasteel bracers.

"Generators or engines?" Luke suggested.

"Both," Jaina replied with a smile. She saw the confused look on her uncle's face and explained quickly. "They're micros. We have enough to destroy the main generator and the primary engine pods."

Luke nodded with an impressed smile and locked in the targeting solution. Jaina dodged around another lance of ion fire and turned to Jacen.

"Update on the _Recluse_."

She was almost afraid to ask. "Just entering the upper atmosphere of Yavin now. Sentinels aren't meant for that kind of environment, so we better get this done and get to them fast."

"Firing," Luke said.

Jaina watched as streaks of ignited exhaust zipped out ahead of them, crossing the distance between them and the Star Destroyer faster than any fighter could travel, indeed even faster than the _Hunter_ was capable. With great satisfaction, she watched as a third of the proton micro torpedoes separated themselves from the rest and changed course.

Seconds later, they slammed hard into the main generator sphere atop the command module, punching a wide hole through the braces, supports, and the globe itself. Electrical lances danced across the damaged globe for a few moments, and then the entire structure exploded in a brilliant flash of igniting plasma and other gases.

Seconds after that, the rest of the micro torpedoes slammed into individual targets among the engine cylinders at the rear of the ship, and two of the three went dark and silent.

Jacen whooped loudly beside her, and she sensed Tash's previous panic give way to glee at the sight. Luke had settled himself with silent cheering, and a smile.

Jaina truly had underestimated the power behind the ship she and Zak owned. To have dealt so much damage to a full Star Destroyer …

"We're out of torpedoes," Luke said, as if reading Jaina's current thoughts, "and with their secondary generator functioning, they still have enough power to shoot us down if they're so inclined. Though, their shields won't be functioning."

"Doesn't matter," Jaina said.

"Yes," Luke said sternly. "By all means, get us to that shuttle."

* * *

They reached the shuttle fast, and Jaina was frantic, trying to devise the best way she could prevent its fall into the gas giant planet. The _Silent Hunter_ had no tractor beams, no grappler pods to hook onto the ship and tow it to safety.

And to make it worse, she had to continue to dodge enemy fire while trying to devise a means to save her friends and aunt.

"Tash," Luke said quietly. "Get to the comm. station and send a wide burst of static into the planet's atmosphere."

Jaina looked over her shoulder at her uncle, but he wasn't looking over at her and he'd locked her out of his thoughts entirely, so she couldn't gauge his intent.

Surely such a thing wouldn't save the doomed shuttle.

Tash did as was requested of her regardless, and the signal went out.

"Uncle Luke?" Jaina said by way of a request for an explanation.

Luke merely smiled at her, amused by something. "Patience, Jaina," he said. Then a few seconds later, Jacen called out to her.

She looked ahead through the viewport to see something she wouldn't have expected in a million years.

The massive bulk of a second capitol ship was rising from _inside_ the gas giant itself. At first, she readied herself to fling the _Hunter_ into evasive manoeuvres in case it became necessary, but then she groaned in despair as a tractor beam was locked onto the shuttle

But when the great ship rose higher and higher, leaving the gasses of Yavin entirely, she saw it in greater detail.

Her uncle had kept _this_ from her? The distinctly arrowhead shape of an Imperial-class Star Destroyer rose from the orangey-yellow opaqueness of the gas giant. It was stark white with gold and blue stripes running down the flanks to the point at the front, and the New Republic standard printed on its upper spine in black, blue and gold. Its turbolasers and laser cannons swivelled around in their direction, taking aim.

Flanking the Star Destroyer in close-knit formation were a Corellian Corvette and a missile ship, both branded by the same identifying marks as the Destroyer.

All three ships rose higher, looming over the much, much smaller _Silent Hunter_, blocking out all the reflected light from Yavin itself and throwing the bridge in deepest shadow.

The formation of ships were already firing their main weapons, laying down a blanket of covering fire to distract the larger Imperial ship.

The comm. system crackled.

"_Luke, that had better be you,_" an unfamiliar voice came over the channel.

"It's me Daniel. Though, we seem to have drawn a little bit of attention. The Imperium doesn't seem to want us to leave." Luke replied. "And the Sentinel is one of ours as well, but she's lost power."

Jaina heard him release a relieved sigh as she fought with the ship's controls, pulling around behind the Corvette now that the tractor beam had released them and luring the TIE squadrons into its blazing line of fire.

"_See what I can do. _Corellian Glory_ out._"

Ahead, great hangar doors were yawning open to receive them, and the cruiser's tractor beams were already gently nudging the _Recluse_ into the belly of the great ship. Jaina kept her eye on the readings and waited until it was safe before she followed.

* * *

The captain of the _Corellian Glory_ met them on the flight deck personally when they exited the ship, making no attempt to hide how impressed he was with the sight of the _Silent Hunter_.

Daniel Tenaha had dark dusted skin with perfect white teeth that he flashed them in a warm smile as they approached him. His eyes were dark, his light brown hair cut into a serviceable style. He wore the official uniform of the Republic Navy, with several non-military medals and pins pinned to it amongst the military ones.

His hands rested lightly on his hips, giving him a look of impatience that wasn't really felt.

Luke and Mara approached him first, and Jaina watched as they greeted him with warm embraces that conveyed a deep friendship between them. Jaina hadn't really known her uncle to have befriended anyone from the military, aside from the Supreme Commander, Admiral Ackbar.

"Thanks for the lift," Luke muttered to him. "I'm never going to be finding a way to get out of this debt any time soon, am I?"

"Probably not," Tenaha replied with a chuckle. "But, I'll tell you what. Just this time we'll forget about it."

"Much appreciated."

"How many with you," the man said, turning to lead them away from the flight deck.

Jaina turned to her brothers. "Organise things here. I'm going with Uncle Luke."

"Why?" Jacen said.

"Someone's got to try and convince these brass knuckles that we need to go back for Zak and Talesa," Jaina said urgently.

She looked over her twin's shoulder to see that Keyan Jace had just stepped off the _Recluse_ and was already trying to segregate himself from the crowd as Maru Chidor tried to establish some kind of order.

"Look at him."

Jacen turned around and fixed his gaze on the other Jedi as well. Jaina sensed Jacen become fully aware of what was going through the Jedi's mind.

Talesa was still with the Imperials, seemingly out of reach. Jaina felt the same about Zak, and she was determined to get both of them back, for both her and Master Jace's sake.

"Whoa," Jacen said, comprehension settling in. "Doesn't that break some kind of protocol or something?"

"Is it so hard to believe, dunderhead?" Jaina said, clapping him on the shoulder. "They've been together through thick and thin for the past six years. They're not all that different from each other."

"I suppose. Go. I'll help Master Chidor."


	26. Chapter 26

**Chapter 26**

_**DETENTION BLOCK, IMPERIUM DESTROYER: **_**MEDUSA**_**; HIGH ORBIT OVER YAVIN 4**_

Zak was quite proud of himself.

Within minutes of being transported up to the Star Destroyer, he had managed to get into Allina's mind, without her realising, and had planted subtle suggestions to benefit his own agenda.

As a result of those manipulations, he and Talesa were sharing a cell, and they were no longer bound. However, the entire cell was flooded with the Ysalamiri anti-Force, so Zak's chances of escaping from it, especially without access to his lightsaber, were greatly diminished.

However, seeing the downside, another suggestion had been planted before he'd been forced into the no-Force cell. Moments later, the holo projector had been brought into the cell and deposited in the corner on a small square bench that had likewise been brought in.

He felt more than just a little guilty that he'd done what he'd done, but it was necessary.

Nothing Allina could say would ever change the facts that the Second Imperium was not the benevolent entity she believed it was, that the Empire before it was just as bad. She needed to be shown the truth, and Zak now had access to just the tool to accomplish such a task.

As far as Allina was convinced, allowing him to tamper with the projector was a means to unlocking the security codes needed to abort a deletion process from trying to access them without it. She was wholly convinced that the projector held information that the Imperium could use to crush the "Rebel Alliance" it fought against, and that whatever was in its memory core would be invaluable to her mother.

If not for the suggestions Zak had left in her mind, she might have been smart enough not to trust him with the device at all. She might have correctly assumed that he'd use it for his own means, or otherwise think that he'd in fact erase whatever data was stored on the memory chips inside.

But she was wrong.

And after many hours tampering with it in silence, watched over by a fascinated Talesa Valara from the corner of the cell, he called a guard and requested Allina's presence.


	27. Chapter 27

**Chapter 27**

Zak maintained his smug, defiant attitude when Allina walked into the cell an hour and a half after his summons.

Though her appearance was at her own discretion, she felt that she was in possession of information that would crush the enemy, and therefore it was of the utmost priority that she viewed it before presenting it to her mother.

Zak kept his thoughts to himself, though he felt no need to do so in the Force-dampened cell. Talesa herself had no idea exactly what he'd been doing with the device. Suspicious of possible surveillance, Zak had refused to discuss his plans even with her.

But now that Allina was here, he could set his plans into motion; show Allina the light, the truth that had been kept from her about the Jedi and the Sith, and the Republic and the Empire.

He and Talesa had initially argued about the validity of the attempt. Talesa was convinced, probably out of bias from the attacks upon her, that Allina's corruption was too far gone and that they should focus primarily on getting themselves freed and returned to the rest of the Jedi on Yavin 4. Zak reasoned that Allina wasn't as corrupted as she appeared. The true nature of the Imperium had been kept from her, her mother lying to her about the purposes and origins of Jedi and Sith. With no other mentor to tell her differently, she had grown up with those beliefs. If she could be shown the truth, even if she would not join them she might possibly let them go.

Zak hoped that she chose to join them. Allina had been right about one thing when she'd first come to Yavin 4: there was much they could learn from one another.

"Well?" Allina said, standing inside the ray shielded cell with her hands on her hips. Both of her lightsabers dangled from hooks on her belt, and Zak's and Talesa's hung from places on the other side. "I was told you had something for me?"

Zak looked over to Talesa and he saw the look on her face that gave away exactly what she was thinking.

Zak had already considered the thought himself and dismissed it. In the Force-lax cell, they _could_ have overpowered Allina, rendered her unconscious, retrieved their weapons, and broken out. But that wouldn't accomplish what Zak wanted to do here.

He gestured towards the holo projector and forced a grim smile. Though a necessary act, what was about to happen was not going to be at all pretty.

"All the encryptions have been bypassed and the files are ready for your viewing pleasure, _Princess_," he said, mocking the title with which he'd heard her addressed previously. "At your convenience, of course," he added with an equally mocking, deep bow.

"And how do I trust that you haven't entrapped this device to erase all the records on it?" Allina replied suspiciously, eyeing them through narrowed lids. "Or to deal me some form of injury to incapacitate me so that you might escape."

"I assure you, I have no such deceptive intentions," Zak said with a frown. "Deception is the way of the Sith, not the Jedi; and quite frankly, I resent the accusation. If I didn't want you to access the files, I wouldn't have touched this thing at all, and I assure you your holocams would attest to the fact that I have."

Allina waved dismissively at him and turned to the holo projector.

She entered a brief line of commands and the device projected a holographic image of an elderly man, seated behind a desk in a fancifully large office, a sprawling cityscape behind him through the plexiglass window.

"What is this?" Allina said, turning to face him.

"History …" Zak replied.

The holo projector continued with its playback as Allina turned her attention back to it.

A quartet of robed Jedi entered the old man's office, their attitude formal, unfriendly, and decidedly hostile. The lead Jedi took a single step ahead of the rest; dark skinned and bald, a deep frown of disgust pinned to his features.

"_Master Windu,_" the old seated man greeted with a feigned smile. "_I take it General Grievous has been destroyed then. I must say, you're here sooner than I expected._"

"_In the name of Galactic Senate of the Republic, you are under arrest, Chancellor,_" the man said, keeping his voice calm and collected though he knew the threat upon which he faced. He, and the three Jedi behind him, drew a lightsaber from each of their belts and activated them, emphasising the speaker's point. The Jedi didn't make another move, though. Not yet.

"_Are you threatening me, Master Jedi?_" then-Chancellor Palpatine said calmly.

"_The Senate will decide your fate,_" the dark skinned Jedi replied.

"_I _am_ the Senate!_" the elderly man hissed, pushing himself up from his seat. He glared at the four Jedi standing before him, his hands dropping to his side. He injected as much indignation and anger into his gaze as he could. But the Jedi before him were unwavering.

"_Not yet!_" the dark skinned man, Jedi Master Mace Windu of the Old Order, said.

With a quick jerk of his left arm, a lightsaber dropped from the sleeve of Palpatine's robe to come to a halt in his grasp. "_It's treason then?_"

The holo-images changed. Palpatine now sat upon a throne-like chair, his hands bound to the arm rests with mag binders, and his eyes intent and expectant as he watched a pair of Force-users duelling before him.

One of them was elderly, with short white hair and beard, of average build with flaring nostrils. He wore a dark top and slacks, with a cape clipped to his shoulders, a golden chain dangling across his chest between the clips. His lightsaber hilt was curved, majestic, the blade red-white against the blue-white of the younger man he fought.

Anakin Skywalker and Count Dooku fought fiercely, trading angry blows with lightsaber, foot and fist; using the Force liberally against each other as they danced back and forth across the observation deck. Eventually, though, Anakin obtained the upper hand.

Their lightsabers locked together and Anakin slid his blade down the length of Dooku's, then twisted it to sever the older man's hands at the wrists.

As the second lightsaber came back down, Anakin grabbed it in his free hand, Dooku dropping to his knees before him. The Sith's blade was reactivated, and Anakin held them out in front of him, cross over only inches from the defeated Sith's throat.

Anakin Skywalker looked down at the older man, eyes betraying the loathing he felt for him, but his Jedi training keeping his actions in check … just.

"_Good, Anakin, good,_" Palpatine praised him. He fixed Dooku with a sinister smile. "_Kill him. Kill him now._"

Dooku looked back at Palpatine, fear and betrayal gleaming in eyes brimming with tears of pain. Zak knew that it had been that exact instant that Dooku had realised that the path of the Sith entailed betrayal, and that he had fallen prey to it, that he had been _used_ by his master.

Anakin Skywalker shook his head. "_I shouldn't,_" he said softly.

"_Do it!_" Palpatine hissed.

Anakin pushed the blades closer to Dooku's neck and pulled them in opposite directions, severing the Sith's head from his body and killing him instantly.

Again, the image shifted, but Zak was feeling the affect now.

Allina's eyes were locked onto the images emitted by the holo projector as they flickered from one Sith atrocity to the next; from the younger Palpatine, Darth Sidious, slaying his master as he slept—images long since through lost—to recorded images of Anakin using the Force against his own wife on the molten rock of Mustafar when confronted by Obi-Wan, convinced that the two were conspiring against him when really, they'd only sought to bring him back to the light.

Zak turned to look at Talesa, who was equally transfixed by what she saw, horrified at what Zak had elected to do, at the extremes he'd gone to in order to make Allina see the truth.

Or perhaps she was just horrified by the images themselves. After all, he hadn't given her any warning of what it was he intended.

Luke had told him that while the holo recordings were accessible in the Jedi Archives on Coruscant, there were very few Jedi that had ever taken the time to review them. Luke himself had taken it upon himself to have copies streamed to him over subspace, and told Zak that they were going to be important to his new strain of training.

More images flickered, with stories ranging from Palpatine issuing the fatal Order 66 after the failed Jedi assassination attempt, to the christening of Darth Vader. From individual images caught from micro-cameras inside clone trooper armour helmets as they mercilessly betrayed their Jedi generals all across the galaxy to Palpatine standing before the Senate in the rotunda and branding the Jedi as traitors only seconds before declaring the birth of the Galactic Empire.

But it was the final set of images that played that Zak had hoped would make the biggest effect on her.

When Luke Skywalker had first shown it to him—long lost recordings of Operation Knightfall: the assault on the original Jedi Temple, led by the newly christened Darth Vader—Zak had been so violently sick that Luke had taken him to the infirmary for nausea suppressants.

He steeled himself as the images played for Allina's, and, unwittingly, Talesa's, benefit now.

The image now showed a dark room, and the lift door at one end of it hissed open to admit its occupant into it. Darth Vader stepped out of the lift into the chamber and looked around.

There was movement, a shadow of it, and then a child came out from his hiding spot behind a low-set chair. The child approached, slowly and carefully, looking around at his clan mates as they came out from their hiding spots as well into the comfort of a seasoned Jedi they hoped would protect them.

None of them was older than ten standard years of age, a lot of them human.

"_Master Skywalker,_" the first child started, his accent thickly Coruscanti, "_there's too many of them. What are we going to do?_"

Darth Vader looked around at all of the children displayed before him once, appraising them with dark, yellowing eyes that did not convey sympathy, or paternity, though he knew he would be a father himself very soon.

Instead, he switched on his lightsaber, and approached the children.

The naive children, unsuspecting of their fate, did not move away—not until Vader struck the first of them down, his lightsaber passing through the boy's body without mercy or hesitation. They started screaming as he advanced on each, one by one, slaughtering every last one of them until there were none left.

_ Not my proudest moment,_ an ethereal voice whispered in Zak's ear as he watched the slaughter. He looked around for the source of the mysterious voice, and saw no one else in the cell besides Allina, Talesa and himself. Though the words that had been whispered into his mind were slightly confusing in themselves, Zak felt that the voice was somehow … familiar.

The images over, Allina dropped heavily to her knees, tears streaming from red and puffy eyes, rolling down her cheeks and dripping to the floor.

Though she made no sound of it, she was clearly crying. Zak could feel nothing save sympathy for her. She had had the truth revealed to her in the worst possible way. He could only guess how she felt at such a betrayal—disgust, horror, guilt, shame, possibly even a great deal of anger.

Zak chanced a look at Talesa to see the horror in her eyes as she looked at him. There was silent accusation there too, a demand to explain why such a measure had been necessary. He ignored it, steeling himself against whatever rebuke she would throw at him, readying himself for however Allina would choose to react.

He took a step towards the girl, feeling for the first time like a father who wanted to console his child. Then he took another, and another, until he was within arms reach of her. He reached out, touched her shoulder comfortingly, trying to will some of his strength and support into her through that simple touch.

He understood in part how she felt—maybe not about the betrayal side of it, but about the horror side of it. Some of those images had left him feeling nauseated. Zak wasn't even sure that _Alitha_ could look upon such a disgusting deed and not flinch.

Then again, she _could_ be heartless.

"Children …" Allina mumbled. "Only children …" Zak gently squeezed her shoulder and she shook him off, stood up, and rounded on him. "AND YOU THOUGHT I HAD TO SEE THAT?" she screeched in his face, outraged.

"Yes," Zak said, keeping his expression calm, refusing to flinch. "It was the only way that I could make you see the true nature of the Sith."

"_They were only children!_" Allina emphasised each word clearly, plainly. "How could he? How could anyone? What kind of father could treat another child with such brutality and without mercy?"

"The kind that had allowed himself to become corrupted by the will of the dark side," Talesa said, her voice gravelly as if she had had to struggle to find it. Zak chanced another look to see the pain behind her eyes as she fought back her own tears.

"But … everything I've ever believed?"

"Come with us," Zak said, deflective. Allina looked up at him, all trace of her outrage with him gone, replaced instead by a blankness that Zak found unnerving. "You haven't really hurt anyone. You haven't succumbed to the corruption of the Sith. _Come with us!_"

"What's to stop your Skywalker from killing me for what I've brought down upon you all? Especially for having attacked one of his Jedi."

"Repentance," Talesa replied. Zak nodded and she continued. "Like Zak said, you haven't really hurt anyone. I suffered no serious effects from what you put me through, and nobody else was seriously hurt during the siege. I'm sure Master Skywalker would look favourably on that."

"He's an optimist, Allina," Zak pleaded. "He's willing to see the good in anyone. He tried for years to make Darth Pravus … before he was a Sith … see the good inside of him and the potential to be a great Jedi. Ultimately, he failed, but through no fault of his own. There is good in you, my girl." Zak reeled from having referred to her as such for the first time ever. "Much good. And much potential."

"Besides," Talesa added still. "He would never kill you for this. It's a last resort for him. There are always other options."

"Imprisonment," Allina cried. "For what I have done, there isn't a punishment I don't deserve!"

"Come wish us and find out!" Zak insisted.

Suddenly the deck beneath them shook with such ferocity it threw Zak against the wall. The lights overhead flickered and then died, replaced almost immediately by dimmer emergency lighting.

The ray shield blocking off the cell from the rest of the detention block shimmered and failed, and Allina looked at it in horror before turning back to the two Jedi.

"What have you got to lose?" Zak insisted.

* * *

Minutes later, they were racing through the empty corridors of the great Star Destroyer in a direction that Allina assured them would take them to the ventral hangar bays.

Now out in the halls, away from the numbing presence of the Ysalamiri, Zak probed deep as he could into Allina's mind and found no hint of deceptive intention anywhere. She subjected herself to the same from Talesa, and when they were both satisfied, she further proved herself by handing over their lightsabers without a word and leading them away.

Zak found it odd that there weren't repair crews running through the corridors trying to repair whatever had been detonated moments ago, and when he queried Allina on this, she explained that repair stations were located closer to the critical systems so that crews could be dispatched there much quicker than they normally would have.

So when they came across a lone Imperial in the hallways ahead, naturally they all stopped.

He wasn't wearing the dull grey or the gleaming white of any officer rank, nor was he donned in stormtrooper armour. He wore what looked to be casual clothes—a dark top and slacks—with a blaster pistol in a holster on the left side of his hip. Whether he was a trooper or an officer, it was clear that he had been off-duty before the alarms.

When he looked back at them, he just smiled and approached, hands raised in surrender so that they wouldn't get the wrong idea.

He'd correctly assumed that because Zak and Talesa were travelling _with_ Allina and that they were armed, that the girl was helping them to escape. Zak thought it odd that he wasn't running to the nearest officer to report.

"Finally," he growled, "a reason to desert."

"Commander Corr?" Allina said, clearly shocked.

"Yes, Princess." Zak assumed Allina had never seen him outside of his stormtrooper armour—assuming that if he was an officer, not a trooper, that she would have recognised him by face, not by voice. "I been lookin' for any excuse to get away for months. Figured I could provide some intel to the Republic if they'd accept a defector, init?"

Zak whooped, and another shudder through the deck reminded him of the urgency of the situation, so he asked the obvious. "What's going on?"

"Under attack, init?" Corr replied as if it were obvious. "Your friends left the moon not too long ago, youn' Jedi. Destroyed the main generator and disabled the primary engines with that fancy little gunship o' theirs before the cruiser reared its ugly head."

"Cruiser?" Talesa replied. Zak looked to her sheepishly and touched a finger to her forehead, allowing the flood of information pour back into her mind. "Thief!"

"Had to, darl'," Zak said, imitating the Imperial's catchy way of speaking and making him frown by doing so. "Allina here can read you like a book, but it takes more skill to read me, and when I saw that little gem of information in your mind when you were asleep, I took it and wiped all trace so Allina wouldn't find out."

Talesa glowered, but he sensed that she understood, and she gestured for them to continue.

"The hanger's just up ahead, Princess," Corr said to Allina, darting ahead of them. "I've got a ship primed an' ready to go for ya'll."

"Thanks, Commander," Allina said sternly. "But I think I'll take mine."

"Suit yourself. But the others can feel free to join me in the ship I have ready. There's _just_ enough room for a couple more souls."

"Sounds lovely," Zak muttered.

They followed the trooper down a corridor and rounded a corner to find him standing there, waiting for them. He saluted to them all as they passed, insisting he had to lock down the blast doors or else someone was going to "ruin the party". Zak was beginning to like this Imperial grunt more and more with almost every sentence that drawled from his lips.

But then that was shattered.

Allina, Zak and Talesa were halfway across the mostly-empty flight deck when there was a strangled cry from behind them.

As one, they all turned.

Commander Corr stood there, a horrified look on his drawn face, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. There was a gentle thrum of a lightsaber, and the ominous glow of red punched through the man's chest.

He was dead before he hit the deck in a heap after the lightsaber slipped out of him, and was kicked aside by the woman that stood in his place.

* * *

_Uncle Hoole was standing stoically still at the edge of the landing platform, no doubt waiting on the man that was to hand over the _Starchild_, for the credits that I knew had already been paid._

_ I was happy._

_ I'd just spent a fantastic night and morning with Alitha—the details of which were still a little fuzzy on the memory. We'd talked a lot, and I'd gotten drunk for the first time _ever_ in my life!_

_ Other things had happened too, but those were things that I wasn't going to talk about with either Uncle Hoole or Tash. Either of them would likely skin him alive._

_ As I approached Uncle Hoole now, I reviewed my purpose for the intrusion._

_ The morning spent with Alitha had been purely intellectual. She'd spent a great deal of time watching me try to move a teacup across the table in her apartment with nothing but my mind. She'd encouraged me to open myself to the possibility of touching the mystical Force that, until our trip to Dagobah, I'd assumed only Tash possessed._

_ But, unlike last night, I wasn't having any luck. It might have been because of the painful throbbing going on in my head; I couldn't concentrate like I should have been._

_ Alitha then brought up the possibility of travelling with us from now on as we remained under Uncle Hoole's care. I hadn't had any objection to the idea at all, especially not when she sugar-coated it with the promise that she would help both he and Tash learn to use the Force in as many different ways as was possible._

_ Uncle Hoole hadn't even been resistant to the idea that Tash and I could do these things. In fact, when we'd first met Alitha—she'd been the person that had set up his meeting with the _Starchild_'s current owner—Uncle Hoole had even encouraged Tash and I to spend as much time with her as we could, learning what we could while he was busy purchasing the ship._

_ So I couldn't see any logical reason that he could refuse Alitha's logical request to join us in our travels. Deevee could continue our regular studies, Uncle Hoole could continue with our anthropological studies, and Alitha could tutor Tash and me in the ways of the Force. We'd get all the educational opportunities available to us from three wholly devoted teaching sources!_

_ Deevee was back at our apartment now with Tash, likely cleaning up whatever mess had been made by her, if any. Anything to occupy his time until his master was finished and we all continued on our way._

_ "Uncle Hoole!" I called out._

_ The shape-shifter turned to look at me, his face almost entirely blank of expression—as was standard for him._

_ It had taken me and Tash four long years, but we thought we were certain that now we were finally able to detect the oh-so-very-subtle flickers and twitches in Uncle Hoole's facial muscles and interpret them correctly into whatever the alien was thinking or feeling._

_ The look that he fixed upon me now was of … boredom, if I read it correctly. That was rare for him. As an anthropologist, he would usually find any number of things to be doing on an alien world, any number of studies to be performing._

_ I grinned as I approached._

_ I got no further than a few more steps, though, before he suddenly wasn't there anymore._

_ One second, Uncle Hoole had been standing there, bored. A second later, pain, agony lit up his face. The second after that, he just burst._

_ It was like a balloon that had been filled with too much air. Except it was gross, and it was fleshy, and bloody, and _GROSS_!_

_ A nova of flesh and blood and bones and internal organs spewed out in every direction. Blood splattered across my face—even across this distance—and I tried hastily to wipe the sticky goop from my face. But it wasn't just the physical act of his death that I witnessed. Thanks to Alitha helping me strengthen my connection with the Force, I was more in tune to the passive signals now._

_ And I _felt_ him die. I _felt_ his psychic scream ringing around inside my already painful head as his life force was snuffed out. It brought me crashing to my knees, and tears dripping from my eyes._

_When the shock finally passed—some several minutes later—I looked around frantically._

_ I could see no assassins nearby, and no evidence of any explosive devices that could have caused such devastation. But I didn't give up._

_ I staggered to my feet, raced over to where my uncle had been standing only seconds ago, and dropped once more to my knees as it became too difficult to stand any longer. Still, I could see no assassin, no explosives, and no explosive _residue_._

_ But I did see _her.

_She was looking directly at me, with a look of abject surprise as she lowered her hand to her side. Even across the distance of three landing pads, I could see the single tear track down her cheek and drip from the end of her chin as her blue-black hair whipped around her face and shoulders in the breeze that blew through the volcanic valley._

_ She turned and strode away; leaving me kneeling in the messy remains of what had once been a great man._


	28. Chapter 28

**Chapter 28**

_**MAIN HANGAR BAY; IMPERIUM STAR DESTROYER: **_**MEDUSA**

Allina and Zak's companion—Talesa, she now knew the name to be—both recognised his expression at the same time: horror, grief, outrage …

Hatred!

Allina could understand the outrage, having just realised that everything she had been taught was a lie. She could even understand the horror and grief after seeing her mother murder Commander Corr in cold blood, and the horrible images from the holo recorder that she just _knew_ weren't false. But she didn't understand the hatred she saw burning behind Zak's eyes.

What reason could Zak have to hate Alitha so much?

She delved deep into his mind just as the last of the memories trickled away; showing her a fiery, yet lightly industrialised planet she recognised was Sullust. Zak was standing on a landing pad, his uncle freshly murdered, staring across the spaceport at the culprit—Alitha—as she turned away from him.

Shock coursed through Allina as she turned her gaze back to her mother.

"Surprised?" the older woman said with the hint of a smile. She lowered her lightsaber, but it remained active as she stared at the unlikely trio before her. Allina shook her head in disbelief; a question to her mother. "I decided to arrive sooner to check on your progress, and I must say, I'm not exactly impressed," the woman explained, stepping around the dead commander's body.

Zak hissed angrily at her and his hand dropped to his belt to retrieve his lightsaber, but he didn't reach it in time.

Talesa darted ahead of him, the green glow of her blade ignited and swinging before she reached the Sith. Lightsabers clashed, held, and then Alitha swung her hand and struck the younger woman with the back of it so hard, it sent her sprawling.

As Talesa struggled to push herself back to her feet, Alitha lashed out with her hand again, pushing with invisible force to send the girl skidding across the deck plates and slamming with adequate force into the wall.

Zak stopped, aghast, and took a step in his companion's direction, but Alitha followed the step with one of her own, lightsaber high and threatening. Allina recognised the intent; she wanted to keep Zak from protecting his friend, and she was in the perfect placement to kill Talesa should Zak try to test just how fast he was.

"Mother, what's going on?" Allina asked her.

"Don't call me that, you silly child," the woman hissed at her.

Allina frowned, but pressed. "Explain! Why have you been lying to me all these years?"

"Naive child!" Alitha snapped. "You really think that you mean anything to me? You are but a means to an end. You, like Darth Pravus, are expendable as long as I acquire that which I am most interested in.

"As such, you had to be very carefully manipulated into believing what I wanted you to believe so that you would do whatever you were told. After all, the Jedi genes in you proved too great a risk if you were told the truth." She snarled, and then fixed her gaze on Zak once more, throwing an almost genuine smile at him that made him flinch.

"You killed my uncle," Zak said softly. Alitha nodded, and Allina saw actual sadness in her eyes. "Why? He would have let you come with us had I had the chance to ask. I thought that was what you wanted?"

"To teach you, yes," Alitha said with another nod. "But with that interfering traitor and his servant in the way, there was too much potential for you to be swayed from what I had to offer. You would never have been interested in the power I could offer you if they were still around."

"What?" Zak said incredulously. "You killed him hoping to turn us to the _dark side_?"

"Wake up!" Alitha said. "I could have given you more power than even my _father_ had. More power than even his teacher had had before him. But you would never have been interested in it. I thought that by removing the only stability left in those miserable lives you led that you and Tash would willingly seek the power I had to offer.

"I hadn't actually intended for you to see me, of course," she added thoughtfully. "I had intended to shift the blame onto someone else and secure both of your turnings to the dark side by watching you exact a slow and painful revenge upon them. But, sometimes things just don't go according to the plans we lay out."

She shot Allina a cold look at those last words, but Allina stood resolute.

"So you spent fifteen years indoctrinating your own daughter—_our_ daughter—into your own design, not so that she could have that same power, but so that she would convince me to seek the power on my own. Would you have killed her then as well?" Zak was angry, infuriated.

Allina felt touched by his concern, though she didn't let it show on her face. Despite what she'd put both Zak and his friend Talesa through in recent days, it seemed that he was still willing to stand up for her against a most dangerous foe. Given the chance, she couldn't let him come too close to self-sacrificing for her.

Far from them both, Talesa was slowly pulling herself to her feet, looking across at the scene with fear, pain and shock in her eyes.

Alitha chuckled, taking Allina by surprise. It was a low, guttural sound that she'd never heard from her mother before, making her sound like a dangerous beast that was preparing to attack an unsuspecting prey.

She tensed, and made no effort hide from her mother that she was ready to defend Zak should the woman choose to attack him.

"Our daughter, indeed," she murmured to herself.

"Are you saying she isn't?" Zak challenged. "She has my mother's eyes for Alderaan's sake! You can't pass that off as random chance."

"Oh no," Allina said, amused. "For all intents and purposes, I suppose you _could_ say that she is our daughter. Genetically, that is. Though, she was never conceived naturally, nor was she carried to term, or _born_."

Talesa gasped, and Zak stumbled, his eyes wide. "You _grew_ her?"

"What?" Allina said, locking eyes with the older woman and glaring. "Grew me? What is this nonsense? Mother, what is he talking about?"

"I TOLD YOU NOT TO CALL ME THAT, CHILD!" Alitha roared, lashing her hand out towards Allina. She flung her own hand out and shielded the invisible attack, with partial success. Though, she still felt as though she had been punched in the face by a Wookiee. "You were grown, in a lab, through _science_. Don't be so naive as to not understand the concept, you ignorant trollop."

"You have a lot of patience, Alitha," Zak said coolly as Allina reeled from the knowledge.

Slowly, she was able to wrap her head around the concept. The woman was her mother no more than on a genetic basis.

"Spending a year growing her, and then another fifteen drilling whatever history and knowledge you wanted her to have into her."

"Don't be absurd," Alitha chastised. "What makes you think that I would spend sixteen years on such an insignificant project?"

Allina sensed the realisation form in Zak's mind. "How long?" she asked the woman. She was stung that Alitha considered her to be a waste of time; after all she had done to prove herself even in recent years.

"Two years."

"But I have memories of fifteen!" Allina insisted. "I remember my thirteenth birthday, at home; when we talked about Zak, and I said that I would go into stasis until he was awakened so that I could meet him. I remember waking up and seeing your face, telling me how long I'd been asleep. I remember a few months after my eighth birthday when you took me to the ruins of Alderaan to see where part of my heritage had come from."

"Don't be so stupid. Your memories were created just as easily as you were. Do you think me a fool to create just the body but not a mind to implant within it?" Alitha took a step towards them.

"So everything that you've ever told me is a lie? Not just regarding us, and the Imperium, and the Jedi, and the Sith? _Everything_?" Alitha nodded, nostrils flaring.

"Allina …" Zak said carefully.

But she paid no mind to what he had to say.

Throughout her life, she had always imagined the emotions within her as a sort of canvas, each feeling and sensation represented by a different colour, with the depth of those feelings and sensations depicted by how dark or how light the shade of those colours were. Each colour, each shade played into shapes, constructs to represent the reasons for the feelings.

It was something that, according to memories she now knew were false, Alitha had encouraged, because it was a way to keep stock of her emotions. She had said that her emotions would be the core of her strength, the essence of her power.

Now, inwardly, she looked upon the canvas she had been working on for the day, the colours added incrementally minute by quick minute, hour by slow hour, ever since she had awoken in the early hours of the morning.

The yellows of happiness at finally being with her father—now proved to be nothing more than a genetic donor—the maroons of frustration as he refused to accept her words, seemed oddly reticent. The blues of sadness that Zak had accepted the Jedi way over the Sith, and the oranges of determination to make him see the truth, and to please her mother, were now forfeit.

Silently, she tore the canvas down, shredding each square inch of it until it lay nothing more than a pile of rubble and scrap in the back of her mind.

She erected a new canvas, starting from scratch but filling the blankness in no more than a second with blacks and greys and reds and purples and browns.

The feelings she felt within were nothing more than a mixture of hatred, of disgust, betrayal, insignificance and incredible loss—the loss of who she perceived herself to be, the loss of the knowledge that her memories and life had been facts, not cleverly disguised works of fiction.

Her mother, for lack of a better word to describe her with, had been right about one thing, whether the memory was false or not: her emotions _were _her strength.

* * *

"_You're over-thinking it, my precious," Mother said as I swung wide with my left-hand lightsaber and missed the target—a standstill, cortosis-plated combat droid with a series of marked targets on it._

_ There were small cages in the corners of the room, made of plexiglass and housing a small reptilian creature that _really_ didn't like the captivity. But it was necessary._

_ Mother wanted me to learn to use my lightsabers effectively without aid of the Force. She wanted me to be prepared for the eventuality of ever having to combat Jedi, or other dangerous foes, in an environment that was as cut off from the Force as an amputee from her missing limb._

_ That was fine. I could cope._

_ "I am not—" I stopped abruptly as the droid suddenly sprang to life and swung its plated arm at my head._

_ Quickly, I ducked under the arm, came up behind the droid, and aimed a heavy, booted kick to the pelvic plate. The droid stumbled away from me and I rolled forward with my lightsabers out to either side of me to avoid injury._

_ Coming back to my feet and spinning in the same movement, I brought both of my lightsabers around to ready positions as I waited for the droid to recover and launch into its next attack._

_ "You're not what, Allina?" Mother said. "Not over-thinking it? I can see that."_

_ I grumbled a curse that, without the aid of the Force, Mother likely didn't hear, and pushed off with my left foot so that I started into a half-spin towards the droid. It was only halfway turned when I reached it, and slapped my right-hand lightsaber against its left arm, which went appropriately dead on contact._

_ My lightsaber bounced away and I continued with the spin, angling my second lightsaber so that it would go high, where it collided with the side of the droid's head and bounced off._

_ The entire droid went dead at once, and its upper body slumped forward, its photoreceptors going dark._

_ I completed the spin by lowering into a crouch and sweeping out with my leg. When I hit the droid's ankles, it hurt, but at least there was enough power behind it to topple the machine over._

_ It crashed to the floor loudly, and I deactivated my lightsabers as I straightened again._

_ Mother was applauding from the corner, and took her foot off the top of the small cage there and planted it back down on the floor before she approached me with slow and even steps._

_ "So maybe I was wrong," she said with a dismissive shrug._

_ "'Maybe' you were wrong?" I said dubiously. I single-handedly hung both of my lightsabers from their hooks on the left side of my belt and followed her out of the room, grinning to myself. "I think you were _definitely_ wrong. If anything, I set a new record."_

_ Mother chuckled and pressed a control next to the door at the end of the short hall. The door hissed open upwards and we stepped through it into a longer, lateral corridor before the door snapped shut behind us again. I let mother lead the way; today's training wasn't over just yet._

_ "That, my sweet, was only the first setting. Every third day for the next year, I want you to do the exercise again. And every day that you do, it will get harder, and harder."_

_ I groaned, exciting another bubble of laughter out of Mother. "What is it with your fondness for smart droids, Mother? Can't you just fight me yourself so that I can learn from someone with _real_ combat expert—_STANG_!"_

_ Mother had flicked her own lightsaber to life mid-comment and swung it around at my neck at breaking speeds. I ducked under it, but not fast enough to save the lock of hair that was sliced off._

_ Kicking myself into a backward roll, I grasped at my hip for just one of my lightsabers._

_ But they weren't there!_

_ Looking up, I saw that they were both grasped firmly in Mother's other hand. I frowned, got back to my feet, and reached out with my hand and my mind to yank them out of her grip._

_ They responded and I felt the double-slap of metal hit my palm and my fingers closing around the cool shafts while watching my mother switch her own lightsaber off and clipping it back to her belt._

_ "_That_ is why I don't fight you," she said haughtily._

_ She turned and resumed her path down the corridor, and I scrambled to catch up to her, this time keeping both of my lightsabers in hand just in case she pulled something like that again._

_ "Because you'll just give me a haircut?" I joked._

_ "Because I'm likely to take your head off," Mother corrected without inflection. "Because even with the aid of the Force, you wouldn't be able to anticipate my every single move one hundred percent of the time."_

_ "Why not?"_

_ "Because I've learned that the best way to combat an opponent is to remove the expected and rely on the unexpected."_

_ "Such as?" I quizzed, curious. I wondered if this had been an intended lesson or, as she'd said about lightsaber technique, it was unexpected and random._

_ Mother didn't respond at first. "You will understand soon enough," she said finally as she stepped into a lift tube._

_ Frowning, I followed her._

* * *

Without so much as a facial twitch of warning, Allina lashed out with both hands and a storm of electrical current arced from the tips of her fingers across the deck at her seemingly unsuspecting, _former_ mentor.

She was only a little pleased to note that the other woman hadn't seemed to expect it, and only dodged aside out of the way at the very last second. She had learned her lessons well, over time.

Allina reassessed her aim and tried again, pouring more energy into the attack this time, drawing her strength from the betrayal and loathing she felt for the woman.

This time, her mother didn't jump out of the way. She remained standing still and snapped her lightsaber off her belt and ignited the blade directly into the path of the oncoming storm.

The electrical arcs glowed brighter, and brighter, impacting with a terrible force on the weapon in Alitha's hand and growing brighter still, like the dangerous glow of a newborn star.

Alitha, hissing to herself, turned her gaze away to protect her eyes, while Allina narrowed hers and allowed her eyelids to filter out most of the intensifying glow.

Then she stopped.

Before Alitha had time to react to the cessation, Allina had both of her lightsabers drawn and activated and lunged forward with deadly purpose.

She swung down at the woman, ignoring the shouts of warning from both Zak and Talesa and pouring as much strength as she had left into the strike.

The pain in her hands from the Force-fed assault was barely tolerable, but she shunted it to the back of her mind. She had to focus solely on her mother at the moment, and could not allow such trivial things like pain distract her.

Alitha's lightsaber swung high and battered Allina's out of the way, but Allina allowed the inverse momentum carry her into a spin and she brought her second lightsaber in for a second strike. Alitha saw it coming, and slashed around with her own weapon to her inner defensive circle to bat it away as well.

Allina stepped back.

She stood before the other woman now, only a couple of empty feet between them, snarling deep in the back of her throat. The lightsaber in her left hand was extended out in front of her, while the one in her right was held in the backhand, held still and horizontal behind her back as she assessed possibilities of getting inside her mother's inner defences.

She had to kill the woman, or at least grievously injure her, for all that she had done, for all the lies she'd told, for all the manipulative stories and missions.

Lie after lie swept through Allina's mind like a rushing tide, each one fuelling her anger, feeding her determination. She barely felt the attempts by Zak and his companion to creep into her mind with calming notions to settle her down.

She felt through them that the other two were convinced Allina didn't stand a chance against her mother. How poorly they had estimated her abilities.

* * *

"_So the Jedi are … bad?" I asked curiously. I was trying my best to understand Mother's explanations, but the way she was saying it was as if she'd forgotten I was only nine, not twenty-nine._

_ "Very," Mother said earnestly, and nodded. "The Jedi have always desired power. During the—and I quote—'Golden Years' of the Old Republic, the Jedi had secretly wormed their influences into the Republic Senate and were using the different representatives to push their own agendas, namely the Clone War."_

_ "But wasn't that war started by the Separatist movement under Count Dooku?"_

_ "Depending on how you look at it," Mother said._

_ She waved her hand over the holo projector on the table beside her and it sprung to life, projecting the features of an elderly man with a grey-white beard and thinning hair. He was a noble-looking man with dark eyes, and I knew who he was._

_ "You must first understand that Dooku himself was raised as a Jedi," Mother started. "And while the Order claimed he left them before the start of the Clone War, the truth is that he never did."_

_ "Why would they claim that he did?"_

_ "Power," Mother said with a frown. "As I said, they had already wormed their way into the Senate. Using those influences, they were able to convince a number of systems to leave the Republic under the belief that the Republic was doing wrong by its members._

_ "Eventually, those systems banded together to form the Separatist movement, as the Jedi had hoped for. They began to build up their own military in case their differences came into conflict with the Republic. The Jedi then sent Dooku to lead the Separatists, knowing that with such a leader, their silent conflict would soon become a war._

_ "Your grandfather, having seen that outcome, sought out the cloners on Kamino to commission an army for the defence of the Republic, while the Separatists used their allies in the Trade Federation and the Techno Union to commission a massive army of battle droids and ships."_

_ "So the Jedi perpetrated a war in order to subvert the Republic and gain control of the government?" I was catching on pretty quickly._

_ "They wanted to _destroy_ the current government, my dear," Mother corrected me._

_ She waved her hand over the projector again and the image shimmer, disappeared, and was replaced with that of my grandfather—white haired with stress and unsmiling._

_ "As long as my father was the head of the government—even though he had to follow the majority rule of the Senate—there was no way the Jedi were going to be able to take over the Republic. They tried again and again to manipulate him the way they'd manipulated the other Senators, but they couldn't, and so they figured the only way they could deal with it was by trying to take him out._

_ "They tried, at first, simple assassination. But one of their own, influenced by my father, thwarted the attempts on his life, and a special guard detail was brought into effect. Guards were trained by the Jedi to the level that they could fight off a Jedi to some success. When they realised that they weren't going to be able to get to him through those means again, they decided that the only way to do it was by war."_

_ "If the Separatists could fight their way to Coruscant, they could have destroyed the Senate District from orbit and obliterated all of the leadership."_

_ "Precisely."_

_ "So … what was their downfall?"_

_ "My father, and his connections to a certain Jedi Knight." Mother smiled. "He'd been silently manipulating this particular Jedi since he'd only been a child. Every time the Jedi Order looked as though it was going to just sit back and ignore yet another threat from the Separatists, my father would get word of the Senate's displeasure of that to Anakin Skywalker, and Anakin would then bring that up with the rest of the Jedi. They would be forced to take _some_ action so they could maintain the pretence of serving the Republic."_

_ "So Jedi: bad," I concluded with a decisive nod._

* * *

Confidently, Allina made the next strike against her mother; skipping forward and stabbing at her with the lightsaber in her left hand. She simultaneously brought the one in her right hand around, twirled it in her hand to a forehand grip, and angled it down into a stabbing motion at her mother's nearest leg.

The older woman swung out wide and circled around to bat downwards at the first lightsaber, red on red clashing and sparking brilliantly, and followed through to block the oncoming second strike before it breached her middle defensive circle.

Frustrated, Allina swung the first blade backwards and high over her head. She brought it crashing down at her mother's left shoulder, intent on severing the arm. Alitha dodged to her right, taking the arm out of the danger zone and lashing out with her own would-be deadly swing at Allina's midsection.

Allina batted it away clumsily and stood back.

Too close, she thought.

She lowered herself into a defensive half-crouch and this time, waited for her mother to make the next move. As she waited, she reached out to take a feel of where the others were. Talesa was well out of danger, but Zak was only feet from her, standing in dumb shock at the sight before his eyes.

Gently, she prodded at his mind.

_What?_ he demanded hotly.

_Get away! I'll hold her off until you and your friend can get away!_

_YOU'LL DIE!_

_If that is my destiny,_ Allina said. While she showed no sign of it, continuing to glare at her mother, she reeled from the realisation that Zak was right about her; she _was_ more Jedi than Sith. And now that she knew that everything her mother had told her about the Jedi being evil-doers was a lie, that didn't offend her at all.

A Sith, she knew from her mother's teachings, did their best to stave death off. While she hadn't been taught the Jedi's views on death, probably a preserving decision by the older woman, Allina read in Zak's mind that Jedi were always willing to sacrifice themselves for the benefit of the larger picture, and accepted the knowledge of their own death with amazingly calm grace.

Zak reeled too, and it showed on his face. _No!_

_Go!_ Allina shouted at him, shoving at him with the Force. He stumbled backwards, away from her, just as Alitha dashed forward and spun on her left foot to swing wide with her blade.

Allina brought both of her own to defend, and closed her eyes for a second when the trio impacted and sparked brightly. She pushed, pushed against her mother's blade with all the strength she could pour into both of hers. Inch by agonising inch, her mother's blade was pushed away from her. She grunted with the effort until, suddenly and unexpectedly, the resistance was gone.

She felt intense heat pass by her hand, and looked down to see the red glow of her mother's lightsaber slicing effortlessly through the top of the hilt in her left hand. The circuits destroyed, the respective blade flickered and disappeared and the severed top of the lightsaber clattered to the deck.

Allina looked up at her mother's eyes to see the self-pride, and flung out the hand gripping the remnant part of the ruined lightsaber, throwing the cylindrical wreck at her mother's chest and imbuing a Force attack directly behind it.

Her mother flew backwards, toppling end for end across the deck away from her, and Allina took the few seconds of grace to recover from the situation.

She reached out to the pieces of her lightsaber and they flew effortlessly and obediently into her hand. Quickly, she pocketed them, and then reached out behind her with the same hand. A second later, she felt the touch of cold metal and instinctually thumbed the activator of the new lightsaber.

A green blade erupted from the end of the hilt, and she brought it around in front of her as her mother got back to her feet and dusted herself off.

The older woman shouted expletives at her as she charged forward again, swinging wildly with her lone lightsaber.

Again, Allina brought both the blades in her possession up to defend, but this time she would not allow her mother destroy either of them. She dashed a step backwards before the woman could attempt to repeat the move and slashed down with the lightsaber in her right hand.

She battered Alitha's lightsaber straight down and the tip plunged into the deck beneath their feet, melting and sizzling away at the steel.

"You lose, child," Alitha hissed, looking up into Allina's eyes. When she saw the hatred being shot at her, she flinched imperceptibly and flung her leg upwards, driving her knee into the girl's gut.

Allina stumbled many steps away, reaching out with the Force to feel for Zak's nearby presence as she stood straight and gasped for air. Alitha took calm, measured steps towards her.

Zak wasn't near. Allina sighed with relief. He was already across the hangar with Talesa, scrambling aboard a TIE Interceptor as fast as they could. She sensed Zak look back at her, then over at the custom fighter belonging to Allina in the next bay and reach out towards it, flicking its systems to life.

She smiled. He wasn't ready to let her die just yet, and he barely even knew her.

Her mother misunderstood the smile and returned it with a sly one of her own as she lashed out again. Allina blocked the lightsaber and spun, lifting her other leg and returning Alitha's recent attack with a similar one of her own.

She felt her foot connect flatly, but her mother didn't stumble away. Instead, she gripped Allina's ankle with her empty hand and flung her aside with the aid of the Force like a disused toy.

As Allina scrambled back to her feet and reactivated the lightsabers in her hands, it struck her that Zak and Talesa had in fact not underestimated her. _She_ had _over_estimated _herself_.

She had been relying on her memories of combat sessions and lessons with her mother—memories she continually forgot had been falsified—to combat her opponent. Among those memories was one of the last time they had sparred, when Allina had successfully disarmed her and beaten her.

* * *

_I twisted my lightsaber around hers and drove down, but she pulled it back before the tip pierced the deck beneath us, and then danced backwards away from me._

_ "You were too slow in executing that," Mother said._

_ "I know, I know," I said calmly. I wasn't annoyed about that fact, actually. I'd planned on Mother getting away from me that time, because she didn't realise she was backing herself into a corner._

_ Then again, maybe she did. I frowned when she back-stepped again and planted one of her feet flat on the wall before pushing up and jumping high over my head to land flat-footed on the floor behind me._

_ "Again, too—"_

_ She was cut off when I immediately compensated by swinging wildly with my arm. She was close enough to me that my forearm crashed into her wrist and sent her lightsaber flying from her grasp._

_ Allowing the arm's swing to pull me into a half-spin, I brought my other lightsaber's tip up underneath Mother's chin and grinned at her._

_ "Dead," I said with a giggle._

* * *

But that memory was two years old, when she knew she would still have been an incomplete shell inside of a tank of genetic soup. She frowned, as realisation dawned on her.

She couldn't beat Alitha. Not now. She wasn't ready. Perhaps she would never be, but unless she cut her losses, she would soon be dead, and Alitha would be able to turn her attention to the fleeing Zak and Talesa and murder them just the same.

Alitha plucked the thoughts from her mind and her smile grew when she sensed that Allina knew what fate would soon befall her.

"Such a shame," she said, clicking her tongue, "after so much time and effort thrown into this project to have to destroy you so senselessly. I had high hopes for you, child. Not extended hopes, obviously, but high nonetheless. There is still a chance for you to complete your destiny."

She nodded past Allina and, though the girl wasn't so stupid to take her eyes off her adversary, she reached out again with the Force to feel the Interceptor start-up completing and the Jedi getting ready to leave.

"Go. Restrain Zak. Kill his companion. You will have made me proud of you, and I can forget that you even thought to challenge me. Fulfil the reason you were created, and forever your loyalty will be honoured."

"Even when I'm dead?" Allina replied doubtfully. "Sorry, mother, but I've seen the truth. I have my own free will and my own destiny now, and I won't be a pawn in your selfish games anymore."

With her mind, she retrieved a small, semi-spherical device from her belt and held it out in front of her. Alitha, who hadn't seen the device before, frowned in confusion.

Allina smiled, glad that she had been able to keep _something_ from the older woman this past year. She flicked an internal component to life with the Force, and then flung it upwards.

It hit the ceiling high above them, and stuck there without further aid from her. She swung at her mother clumsily to force the woman back a couple more steps, then shut down both of the lightsabers in her hands and belted them. Alitha stood there, confusion growing as she watched the girl's next move.

Allina blew a kiss to her mother, turned, and bolted for her ship.

She heard Alitha's frustrated screech behind her, felt the woman give chase. But before Alitha could get more than two steps, the plasma detonator exploded, shaking the entire hangar deck and threatening to throw Allina off balance as she ran to escape the blast.

Alitha behind her screamed as she wasn't so lucky, but Allina paid no mind as she clambered into her ship's cockpit, sealed the canopy shut, and followed the Interceptor out of the vast hangar.


	29. Chapter 29

**Chapter 29**

_**TIE INTERCEPTOR; FLEEING FROM THE **_**MEDUSA**

Zak gripped the yoke tightly, as if it were the most important thing in the entire universe. Right now, for him, that was exactly the case.

Despite what the Imperium soldier, Commander Corr, had guaranteed, sitting here now in the cramped cockpit of a single-pilot TIE Interceptor with Talesa crammed in tight behind him—practically sitting on his shoulders—he doubted that the three of them could ever had squeezed themselves in.

His heart ached for the poor soldier that had met such a cruel and malicious end, and he vowed to tell Luke Skywalker of his brave act as soon as he returned to safety.

But it was the returning part that was proving to be difficult.

Speeding away from the Star Destroyer at the Interceptor's top speed, Zak had doubled back just the once to see just what kind of damage had been done to it.

Corr hadn't at all exaggerated one iota. The massive sphere of the ship's primary generator was nothing more than a shattered shell, debris drifting in every imaginable direction, and the ship itself was drifting ungainly, as if unsupported by its engines. Turbolasers and ion cannon batteries still fired at full power, not at them, but at an ornately decorated Star Destroyer some distance away.

"Zak," Talesa said smugly. "I'd like to introduce you to the _Corellian Glory_. She's responsible for bringing us here."

"Why _is_ she even here?" Zak asked, swinging around again and plotting a course for the great ship.

"Luke Skywalker reported to the Supreme Commander that there was a threat to the Praxeum. While you were darksiding on him, you mentioned at some point that the Empress was on her way, but you were mum on the time frame with which to expect her," Talesa replied, ignoring whatever restrictions had been imposed on her about the amount she could tell him. "Ackbar wasn't keen on the idea of pulling away vital fleet resources for the defence of a planet so far inside Republic space, but when the _Glory_'s captain pointed out that the Imperium fleets could expand around towards the Tion sector, Ackbar had no choice but to allow him to volunteer to the Praxeum's defence."

"He just ordered him?"

"I said the captain volunteered," Talesa said. "Watch out!" she cried suddenly.

Zak looked ahead just as suddenly and yanked hard on the yoke to spiral up and over the top of the thick wreckage of a TIE fighter, still glowing hot with extinguished fires. He breathed a heavy sigh and pressed on.

"The _Corellian Glory_ might be a part of the fleet, but she was built using Captain Tenaha's own funding. She belongs to him, in essence," Talesa explained. "Fleet decides major assignments, but Tenaha can countermand any of the orders.

"Of course—" She stopped herself temporarily as Zak pulled back on the weapons triggers and blasted a TIE apart that was in their way. "Of course, countermanding executive orders could very well cost him his rank and crew. Not sure he'd be willing to take that risk."

Zak nodded and gazed out ahead of him to assess the situation as best he could.

TIEs screamed forward around him, pushing their engines faster in pursuit of the escaping Jedi. They ignored him, as if they either didn't perceive him as a threat or they assumed he was one of their own.

Ahead, the great destroyer sat resolutely still above the gas giant of Yavin, its port flank facing the drifting, but in range, Imperium destroyer as its main portside batteries fired a heavy barrage at the crippled ship. The smaller corvettes sat in front of it, laying down a heavy suppression of concussive missiles and turbolaser fire intended to hold back the swarms of TIEs.

A bright flash out of the corner of his vision caught Zak's attention, and he and Talesa turned to see TIE wreckage zipping into view from behind them.

Hurriedly, Zak switched on the tactical scanners to see another fighter had come up behind them, and that it matched no known Republic standards, and yet somehow looking familiar.

He pushed the engines, intending to get away from the unknown assailant before they took him out as well, but the only incoming fire from the fighter was directed at another TIE passing by Zak's starboard side. They made no attempt to shoot him down.

"_Sorry for sneaking up on you like that,_" Allina's voice came across the comm. line. Zak furrowed his brow. "_Now, now. Would you prefer I let them blast you out of the sky? They were locking you into their targeting scopes._"

"Thanks," Zak said, genuinely grateful for the rescue.

"_How much do you trust me?_" she asked after a moment of silent hesitation.

"At this point, what choice do I have?" Zak chuckled.

"_Great. I have an idea, if you would indulge me._"

* * *

A couple of minutes later, and Zak and Allina's fighters had completely overshot the _Corellian Glory_ and its escorts. Zak was now picking up another four fighters locked into a tight formation around he and Allina, though none of them made any attempt at communication or any moves that could be construed as hostile.

Zak knew that it was a part of the plan, but what he wasn't sure about was if their loyalty to the Imperium wavered. He couldn't be sure if Allina had told them their target was enemy or if she had been honest with them.

He resisted the urge to ask her, or even to probe her thoughts for the truth. He had to believe that she knew what she was doing. After all, she _had_ risked her own life to make sure that he and Talesa would be able to escape from Alitha. He knew there would be no point in it only to now have them killed.

Up ahead was yet _another_ Star Destroyer. It was many times larger than the ship Allina had identified as _Medusa_, or the one that Talesa had identified as the _Corellian Glory _and bore many similarities to the Empire's flagship the _Executor_—though it was even much larger than that.

Zak knew without being told that this was Alitha's ship, possibly even the flagship of the Second Imperium.

It was terrifying to note that the Imperials had built such a monstrous thing without the knowledge of the Republic.

He remembered that Allina had mentioned "home" when confronting Alitha on the _Medusa_'s hangar deck, and made it a point to ask where that home was. Maybe it would serve the New Republic as vital intelligence to a Second Imperium stronghold.

Talesa agreed with his assumptions with a silent nod, and he sensed her decision to inform her master of the possibility of Allina being a source of useful information when they were reunited.

She had expressed an initial resistance to Allina's idea—not because she disliked her, but because the plan seemed to entail too much risk. She even attempted to sneak into Zak's thoughts and leave suggestions for him to resist the plan as well. But he'd fought her off and reasoned that it would bring about a _small_ victory in the wake of losing the Praxeum.

So onward they flew, like a flock of deadly thrashtails darting towards a recent kill. So far, the new, gargantuan Destroyer hadn't released its own fighters, and it was still well out of range of the _Corellian Glory_ to use its main weapons on the Republic nuisance.

When they were within acceptable range, Zak nodded and opened a private comm. to Allina's ship.

"Ready when you are," he said resignedly.

"_Good. Just remember to take a few shots and hightail it as soon as you can back to your ship. The rest of the squadron will keep up the assault._"

"Until they launch their own fighters," Talesa mumbled.

"That's the idea," Zak reminded her. "Go for it, Allina," he added to the comm. There was a brief slash of static as the channel was changed to a more public one that she insisted all the ships in the system would be able to pick up.

"_IN THE NAME OF THE _TRUE_ EMPRESS!_"

Then she fired.

Orange streaks of the ionised tails of proton torpedoes flew out ahead of them, crossing the distance quickly and slamming into insignificant patches of reinforced hull, detonating on impact but doing little, if any, damage.

Zak and the other TIEs opened up with pitiful laser barrages as they approached weapons range, firing at whatever they could hit.

The formation split, separating into three groups of two that went off in different directions, firing lasers into any and every patch of the Star Destroyer's hull they could as they skimmed over the great bulk of the ship. Zak and Allina's fighters skimmed towards the rear of the ship, with Allina alternating between main laser cannons and proton torpedoes to deal as much damage as possible before the Destroyer launched their retaliation.

Zak saw it first.

The hull split open in the midsection, identifying the existence of a great hangar door otherwise concealed as a bare patch of hull.

He darted left, and then right around TIE fighters that were swarming like insects out of the hangar, ordered to destroy the renegades attacking the ship.

Zak picked up buzzing transmissions between the two destroyers, and between the fighters that had joined them on this foolish assault and their brothers and sisters engaging the _Glory_.

"They're actually biting," Talesa said with an astonished gasp. "I don't believe it. They're actually responding as if Allina's trying to usurp her mother!"

"Imperials," Zak scoffed.

"_OK, Zak. Get your butt out of there. The rest of the _Medusa_'s squadrons are on their way here now and we _don't_ want to get caught in the middle of that firestorm._"

"Copy. Setting a course for the _Corellian Glory_."


	30. Chapter 30

**Chapter 30**

_**NEW REPUBLIC STAR DESTROYER: **_**CORELLIAN GLORY**_**; LOW ORBIT OF YAVIN**_

Talesa knew that there was going to be trouble the instant they returned, though it still surprised her to see her mentor and Luke Skywalker standing at the ready with their lightsabers activated, waiting.

Republic marines were stationed around the flight deck, blaster rifles and pistols trained on the Interceptor and the two ships that followed it into the _Corellian Glory_'s primary hangar bay.

As it turned out, one of the fighters that had joined them on their rebellious assault on the massive Star Destroyer was, like Commander Corr, a would-be defector.

Seeing that one of the fighters and Allina's own were setting a course for the Republic destroyer but not engaging in hostilities was a signal to that pilot that they could find a way out of the mess without suspicion.

It would appear to all others that the two TIEs had been piloted individually by Zak Arranda and Talesa Valara, though the Imperials were currently too preoccupied to sort out such details.

Allina's plan had been simple.

Since the oncoming juggernaut was far too powerful, even against a Republic-spec Star Destroyer's shields—which were mostly depleted now—the crew of the ship had to be distracted somehow before they could open up with a barrage of heavy turbolaser fire. In attacking the ship with a handful of TIEs from the _Medusa_ in Allina's name, it would seem to the crew—with their Empress away and unable to explain differently—that Allina was trying to destroy her mother's seat of power and take over the Imperium for herself.

It was a high hope. There was always the chance that the ship's commander had been shrewder and would suspect that the oncoming ships were piloted by Allina's prisoners. Nevertheless, it proved to be a success.

With urgent prodding from the fighters that had helped instigate the ruse, the rest of the _Medusa_'s complement had disengaged from battle with the _Corellian Glory_ and its swarming fighters and set a direct and speedy course for the larger Star Destroyer to defend their brothers against supposed traitors.

This then prompted an equal response from the larger ship, which launched wave after wave after wave of fighters to reinforce those that had been launched initially. The larger ship had even increased in speed and Talesa had had the distinct pleasure in watching as it overshot the _Corellian Glory_ and opened fire on the dwarfed and damaged Star Destroyer.

The approach to the _Glory_ hadn't been entirely simple, however.

Some Imperial pilots had refused to disengage from the primary target to engage the secondary and there were still enough of them skilled enough to avoid Corvette fire barrage that proved a nuisance against the defending fighters.

Zak had had to break off his approach at one point to obliterate a particularly pesky Imperial that wouldn't back off from its attempts to destroy a single B-wing, which dodged and darted around the larger ships in vain attempts to shake their pursuer.

That task done, identifying them as a non-threat, they'd been grudgingly granted docking permission. Only the Jedi aboard the ship would know who was aboard the fighters, but even they would be apprehensive about Allina and another Imperial freely boarding, surrendering themselves.

And now Talesa could see that tension for herself. Allina had left her craft first after shutting down, and knelt on the deck with her hands clasped behind her head in surrender.

Both of the elder Jedi, and Jaina Solo who had accompanied them, eyed her carefully, as if it were another deception by the girl and that she would attack them soon.

When Talesa and Zak left the Interceptor behind, grinning and with an arm around each others' shoulders in triumph, Jaina Solo rushed them, shoving them apart and embracing Zak so tightly, he looked ready to burst. Then she kissed him, eliciting wolf-whistles and whoops and cheers from some of the Republic marines and a sly, knowing grin from her.

She, meanwhile, continued to walk until she stood in front of her mentor, glad that no one else was paying her as much attention as they had Jaina.

For a few seemingly long moments, they just stood there, gazing into each others' eyes and leaving all that needed to be said unsaid.

She knew how happy he was that she was alive, even though he fought hard to keep those feelings to himself. She knew he longed to embrace her much as Jaina had embraced Zak. But he wouldn't. Instead, he settled for a hand on her shoulder, which conveyed to her just as much as any embrace ever could.

She turned then, to see the unidentified Imperial pilot leaving the TIE fighter on the far side of the hangar. The helmet came off, revealing long blonde hair and a tight, resigned smile.

The Imperial knew she was about to encounter trouble, giving herself up to the enemy, but she didn't seem to care.

Flicking her long hair out from the collar of the flight suit, she tucked the helmet under her left arm and marched over to the Jedi with her chin held high and her eyes locked.

"Jedi Skywalker?" she said when she stopped a few feet from them. Talesa watched as Luke nodded his confirmation and the pilot dropped her other hand to her waist to yank a blaster pistol from the belt.

Marines across the deck stepped forth as one, gesturing dangerously with their weapons as if daring her to draw hers.

The Imperial shot the nearest marine a disparaging look and turned her eyes back to Luke, who extended his hand out towards the pilot, palm up, as if accepting something.

She smiled, though it was grim, and plucked the blaster from its holster. She slapped its grip into the Jedi Master's hand and waited. "Though my intention was to defect, I formerly declare myself a willing prisoner of the Republic and surrender my rights and my life to you. Do with me as you wish."

Talesa sensed the shock and disbelief rippling through the marines like an unchecked wave. Though she had already come to the conclusion that the pilot was to defect while they were in flight, she herself was uneasy.

She sensed no deception in the fighter pilot, merely apprehension, even a trickle of fear of not knowing what was going to be done with her. She knew that New Republic Intelligence would try to milk her for all the information that they could get with regards to the Second Imperium, though it likely wouldn't be terribly much. In fact, she was expecting no less.

Luke Skywalker seemed to be in a state of disbelief himself, though unlike Talesa, he hadn't invaded the Imperial's mind to ascertain her true loyalties. Perhaps he could see something that Talesa could not in the woman's eyes, something that gave away what she was thinking and made the mental intrusion unnecessary. Or perhaps he was merely taking it on faith.

"Name and rank, soldier?" he asked her politely, lowering his lightsaber and deactivating the blade.

Talesa caught out of the corner of her eye the patience of Allina, kneeling on the deck with a trio of marines slowly approaching her from behind, taking a step every few seconds. She waited for the inevitable moment when Skywalker would turn his accusing gaze on her, berating her for all she'd done.

"Squadron Wing Commander Talia Sun," the pilot said, snapping to attention.

"Very well," Skywalker said with a nod. He turned to his left and tossed the blaster to the nearest marine, who caught it in his free hand and holstered it. "Major; take the commander to the brig—_un_molested."

"Yes sir, Master Jedi," the man said. He gestured toward a couple of nearby marines and the three of them lowered their weapons and approached the pilot.

They escorted her off the deck just as a PA sounded. "_All hands, all hands; prepare for emergency hyper jump,_" came a young man's voice.

Skywalker seemed to ignore it as the hangar doors started to close, and all eyes flickered over to Allina, who kept her gaze locked on the floor just before Skywalker's feet.

Neither of them said a word for a second, but Luke did hold up a hand to signal the approaching marines to stop and back away.

It wasn't a warning so much as it was an order.

"Stand," he said, less kind.

Allina nodded and stood, still not looking at him.

Luke Skywalker approached her, belted his weapon, and waved off the marines that stepped forth in alarm. "What do you have to say for yourself, young lady," he asked her quietly. Talesa saw the panic and guilt on her features, which meant that Luke did too, but kept her mouth shut.

"I—"

"With all due respect, Luke," Zak interrupted. Allina looked up at him, guilt giving away to hope for an instant that lasted only that. Luke didn't turn to the younger Jedi, but Talesa sensed that he was listening. "She did just help us escape from the Imperials."

"A situation which might have been avoided if not for her actions," Luke pointed out.

"Details," Zak replied, waving a hand dismissively. "If she hadn't, I would never have met her, and you'd probably have one more Sith roaming the galaxy trying to undo everything you've worked for since the fall of the Emperor."

Luke mused, and Talesa felt a gentle probe from him upon her mind, as if he was trying to ascertain if Zak had been compromised. She let him in, let him see everything … at least, everything that was pertinent.

"I see," he said. Allina looked to him now, forcing herself to look up into his gentle blue eyes. "Well?"

"I have no acceptable explanations for my actions, Master Jedi," she said meekly.

"Try an unacceptable one then," he challenged.

Allina hesitated. "I … am not who I thought I was. My memories are a betrayal of the truth. My … mother"—she bit on the word as if it was some kind of disgusting curse—"led me to think that I was … more than I am. I am a creation, a freak, an experiment."

Luke nodded, understanding what she was talking about. "Though you are indeed younger than the truth would present, you have memories that span an entire childhood of experiences. They might be fictitious facsimiles; the fact that you have believed them true all of these years is a sign that they are an integral part of who you are, especially considering you have had no other life to argue different."

"But—"

"Allow me to finish," Luke said sternly, holding a hand up to stop her. Allina's mouth snapped shut and she stood completely still. "Thank you. As I was saying … in your memories, have you ever shown acts that you cannot fathom or reason with?" Allina shook her head after a couple of seconds to consider. "Have you, in that time, done something that a Jedi like myself would disagree with?" She opened her mouth to tell him of her attacks upon Talesa, but Skywalker silenced her again. "Don't think me heartless, but that's not what I meant. Talesa is quite fine since then, and I sense fully recovered. I mean on a more serious scale."

Again, Allina shook her head, defeated.

"Then, child, take heart in the fact that as corrupting and deceitful as your mother has proven herself to be, and as malign as her intent in creating you, she has unwittingly built herself a formidable enemy. I sense through all three of you that you fought well and honourably against her, though through the empowering of your emotions rather than logic and wisdom.

"Manipulating you the way she has, has given us a great ally. You haven't taken a life in cold blood, you haven't shown any malign actions. She moulded you to believe that you, and her, were good people. And while that cannot be said to be true of her, I sense much genuine good in you. Despite your expectations, I will _not_ turn you over to the Jedi Council for punishment."

"But, Master Jedi," Allina began desperately. "I deserve—"

"You deserve to be given a fair chance to live a decent life," Luke corrected her before she could finish. Zak stepped toward them, his arm around Jaina's waist as she latched onto his side. Keyan Jace stepped past Talesa and walked over to Luke Skywalker's side.

As Talesa watched, he laid a gentle hand on her shoulder and smiled down at her. "As an official representative to the Council at this time, I tender my agreement with the Grand Master's assessment of you, and I too will not turn you over to the council."

Allina looked down at the deck, and then—slowly so that the nearby marines wouldn't react as they had with Talia Sun—she plucked two lightsabers from her belt.

Talesa, her eyes wide in surprise, looked down at her belt to find that hers was missing.

Allina looked at her, smiled weakly, and tossed it past the two senior Jedi to her. Talesa caught it, examined it for any battle damage, and then carefully clipped it back to her belt.

"Thank you for letting me borrow it," she said. She handed the remaining lightsaber over to Luke Skywalker, who accepted it at her wordless insistence. Her hand darted into a pocket in her clothes and she pulled out the ruined remains of a third lightsaber, which she also handed over to Luke. "It became … necessary to secure a temporary replacement when my mother destroyed that one," she added, grief stricken.

Talesa looked at the destroyed weapon carefully before Luke tucked it out of sight. She thought she saw the silver gleam of the girl's initials moulded into the hilt near the damage.

Allina sighed. "Thank you for your … opinions," she said to the two Jedi before her. Zak took another careful step forward, Jaina with him, and Talesa sensed alarm forming in his mind. She took a step of her own and watched. "Unfortunately, I still disagree. I respectfully request you arrest me now, before I intentionally make it necessary."

Luke cocked an eyebrow at her, daring but careful, and he nodded to the nearest cluster of marines. They shuffled forward and, gently grasping her wrists, escorted her off the flight deck and away from them.

"Return to duty," Jace said to the remaining marines, who then departed.

"We have much to talk about," Zak said, looking from Talesa to the two adults. "And before you chastise me for it, I do apologise for deliberately allowing myself to be captured. At the time it seemed the most viable way to stall her from coming after the rest of you."

Jaina prodded him hard in the side. "Excuses!" she hissed.

"I agree with Jaina," Luke scolded. "It wouldn't matter to me who her intended target was; there were more competent Jedi available to forestall a pursuit while we retreated—Master Jace or his apprentice, to name a couple of them." Talesa flushed scarlet at the commendation. "Taking the matter into your own hands like that risked your life if you proved too difficult to obtain alive and showed recklessness and disregard for the wellbeing of others."

"I—"

"Your sister is waiting for you on the observation deck," Luke cut him off. He smiled with a knowledge Zak didn't have. "I suggest you go see her now, before you once more lose your chance to talk to her. Then I want both of you on the bridge. You have two hours."


	31. Chapter 31

**Chapter 31**

Jaina stayed by Zak for those entire two hours, hating how they flew by so fast.

At first, they'd gone straight to the observation deck, assuming they would find it empty save for Tash. However, all of the Jedi that had escaped with them from Yavin 4 were there. Maru Chidor and Mara Jade Skywalker stood alone in a corner, conversing quietly amongst themselves and keeping a watchful eye on the rest of them as they hung around in groups and clusters talking amongst themselves about the narrow escape.

Tash stood alone, though not for lack of trying. Jacen, Tenel Ka, Lowbacca and Anakin stood nearby, though they too were immersed in their own conversations and recounts of what had happened.

Outside the transparisteel dome, they could see the brilliant blue and white streaks of stars they passed that were warped by the effects of subspace.

After over an hour and a half of watching Zak and Tash cross the bridge of silence between them, making amends and recounting their own experiences to each other, Jaina, Zak and Jacen reported to the bridge. They invited Tash to come with them, but she had her own thing to do, her own solitude to enjoy now that the weight of guilt about ostracising her brother had been lifted.

Captain Daniel Tenaha greeted them at the lift tubes, as if he'd been expecting them. In truth, he probably had been.

He shook Zak's hand for several moments, introducing himself and praising Zak many times for two daring escapes from the Imperials in as many years. Then he gave them a brief tour of the ship's bridge, pointing out all of the vital systems and their functions, as well as the non vitals and _their _functions.

From what they could tell, the _Glory_ hadn't acquired much damage from the attack. A few of the turbolaser cannons were out of commission, and the main shields were severely depleted—only able to stop a handful more shots from the larger Star Destroyer before failing altogether.

A few control boards across the ship had shorted, or fused, or exploded, but systems remained functional and no one was seriously hurt. Jaina was even surprised to learn that every fighter that had gone out to defend the ship—including some of Striker Squadron—had returned home safely, the most damaged ones having no more issues than a burned out engine or a laser cannon blasted off.

All in all, the ship and its flanks had been incredibly lucky, and the captain wasn't ashamed to admit as much to them either.

Once the pleasantries had been dealt with, Luke Skywalker and R2-D2 arrived; the stocky little droid lead the way onto the bridge and over to the communications station. Jaina and company intercepted them there.

Tenaha pointedly dismissed the crewman stationed there, insisting it was only temporary, and greeted Luke.

"What's this about?" Jaina asked.

"I was able to get in contact with your father while you were on the observation deck," Luke explained. "He said he'd call back at around now with some suggestions."

"Suggestions?" Jacen prodded.

"On where to go from here," Zak guessed. "It's obviously out of the question that we go back to Yavin 4. The Imperium is likely to be blockading the system even now and bringing in a fleet or small detachment to secure it from a Republic attempt to recover it. And with that monstrosity there guarding it, there isn't much chance of that happening soon, is there?"

"Not likely," Tenaha huffed. "I wasn't happy to hear from the tactical specialist that she outgunned us."

"Indeed," Luke said with a nod. R2 whistled, and he looked down and nodded at the barrel-shaped droid. "Plug in and use your own ident code to authorise receipt of the signal."

R2-D2 complied and a computer interface plug snapped out of a port in the barrel of the droid and extended forth, plugging itself into an astromech interface. After a minute of subdued bleeping and rotating of the interface plug, Artoo whistled shrilly and retracted the arm, folding it snugly back into its port.

The small holocomm in front of the group flickered to life with a hiss and crackle of static and a small holographic image flickered into existence, showing a downscaled Han Solo seated behind a desk with a stack of flimsi to one side, and a single sheet of it in his hand.

Jaina had never before seen him look so … paranoid.

"Han," Luke greeted shortly. "What have you got for us?"

"_Is this channel secure?_" Han grumbled something to himself—an admonishment, she heard. "_Of course it is. Artoo wouldn't betray us like that, would you, little buddy?_"

R2 responded comically with a whistle, as if the droid believed he was expected to respond.

"_Didn't think so,_" Han said, allowing a small smile. "_Things here are … well they're not as great as I hoped. I was lucky even to get through my own channels unnoticed by whoever it is that's causing all of this trouble._"

"What trouble?" Jaina asked.

"Jaina," Luke started softly, "since this whole thing began, a couple of the Republic senators have … died; unexpectedly, and through a series of convenient 'accidents'."

Jaina gasped. "No! Mum?"

"_She's OK,_" Han said from the comm. screen. "_Borsk Fey'lya and your mother have both had attempts made on them, however. I'd love to flog whoever botched the attempt on Fey'lya though; we could have had a decent Chief of State like that!_" He clicked his fingers to emphasise his point and the holo image flickered for a second. "_Naturally, I was responsible for foiling the plan to take out Leia. As if I would let a Trandoshan anywhere _near _my wife without a half dozen Jedi trailing him._"

"Sounds like a right mess," Jacen said glumly.

"_You bet your Hutt's behind it is,_" Han growled, tossing the flimsi from his hand so that it disappeared out of sight altogether. "_The New Alderaanian representative is trying to push for martial law until this can be sorted out, but a lot of the other Senators aren't keen on seeing another repeat of the days of the Empire. To be honest, I could use Jace's help keeping some of them in line._"

"He and his apprentice left about an hour ago, but I'll get word to him right away. Where can he meet you?" Luke said.

"_Leia and I are still in Galactic City, in the Senate District. You can have him come straight over to our place. I'll be sure the boys don't give him too much trouble._"

"Fair enough," Luke replied grimly. "I really do hope this is sorted out soon. The last thing we need now is a disorganised Senate. What's Ackbar's stance on the idea of martial law?"

"_He was the one that suggested it to Senator Stans. Though, I suspect he was pressured into it by some of his lieutenants, and they're either enemy spies or being pressured by enemy spies._"

"I'd have the NRI check out all of their connections. Contact Rexar Pal. He owes me a favour, even though his methods are somewhat … unorthodox. Artoo will upload his contact details."

"_On it,_" Han said. He shuffled through a couple of sheets of flimsi that fell off the top of the stack until he came to the one he was after, and then looked back up. "_Fortunately, I can provide some good news today. I found a suitable place for relocation._"

"You have?"

"_Sure have,_" Han said cheerfully. "_It's located deep in the unmapped territories beyond Phu. It should do for a relocation settlement of the academy._"

"What kind of facilities?"

"_None, as yet,_" Han said. "_I was planning to contract for a team of engineers that have worked for Lando for years. He trusts them implicitly. They should have something up and running for you within the year._"

"I would recommend only those you know can keep it to themselves no matter what circumstances befall them," Luke suggested.

"What are we going to do until then, Dad," Jaina asked. "We can't very well stay here."

"_Sure you can, Angel._" He flashed them with a wide grin. "_Living in space isn't so hard. Though you'll probably want to keep moving to make sure the Imperium doesn't find you. I've already fed Artoo the coordinates to the planet you'll eventually be going to—they were contained within the ident request at the head of the transmission. Just plug and go when you're ready. But until then, you're going to have to keep yourselves off the grid._

"_Officially, Yavin 4 facility was destroyed and all inhabitants evacuated to the facility on Ossus. Only a select few will ever know where you're going._"

"What about the Jedi Council?" Zak asked.

Jaina looked to him, thinking that his question had merit, and then looked to her uncle to reinforce that fact.

Luke added onto Zak's question with his own statement. "I would never accuse any member of the Council of corruption," he stated plainly. "And not one of them would ever give the information up under duress if they were ever interrogated."

"_I was under the impression they wouldn't see me?_"

"You're the husband of a Republic senator, the father of a trio of in-training Jedi, an honourable general in the Republic Navy, a war hero, and brother-in-law of the Jedi Grand Master," Luke pointed out as a statement of fact. "There's no way they'd refuse you; especially if you let them know ahead of time that you spoke to me first about speaking to them."

Han nodded, looked off screen for a second as someone delivered a message to him, and frowned. "_Confirmation just came in that the Hutts have been cut off. The Imperium took Lannik and then went straight after Nal Hutta and all-but-destroyed their defence force. The Ruling Heads have been killed, and the Hutts are asking for Republic intercession._"

"What's the Senate had to say about that?"

"_I don't know yet. I only just got that report. And I'm not letting Leia get anywhere near the Rotunda in case someone tries to take another shot at her. I'll see what I can do about getting more information._"

There was a pause where Han Solo looked away for a moment, and when he looked back at Luke, he was scowling.

"_Listen, Luke,_" Han said suddenly. "_I've got to go. The nature of the Senators' deaths has been kept from the public thus far. Fey'lya wanted it kept under the hat, as it were, until the crisis is solved. The last thing he feels we need right now is the public thinking that its senators aren't safe. In fact, he censored the HoloNet to stop them from reporting on the attempt on his life._"

"Oh how very considerate of him," Jacen drawled sarcastically. "Worrying about how the common man will react to the fact that politicians are being targeted by unknown assassins."

"_Right,_" Han replied with a sly wink. "_Anyway, I have to go. Review the information from Artoo whenever you want, but don't feed it into the nav computers until you hear from Lando that the facilities are ready for your arrival. After I'm done here today, I'm going to start contracting a few old friends of mine to run the Yavin blockade and retrieve anything that was left behind in your mad rush to evacuate, so leave a list with Artoo as soon as you can and he'll get it to Threepio for me._"

He paused, and shifted his gaze just enough that he was looking solely at Zak and Jacen, standing side by side on the edge of the group.

"_Look after Jaina and Anakin._"

Then he was gone.


	32. Chapter 32

**Chapter 32**

_**IMPERIUM STAR DESTROYER:**_** MEDUSA**_**; DECAYING ORBIT OVER YAVIN**_

Sebeka Farran stormed onto the flight deck of the _Medusa_ so annoyed, that it was thick in the air, and her accompaniment of stormtroopers and specialists shied many feet behind her.

They marched with precision, forcing their way through the corridors of the crippled and dying Star Destroyer and executing any of its remaining crew they came across.

Already, she'd worked out that the small number of TIEs led by the child Allina that had attacked the _Fury of Palpatine_ were a rogue element; an attempt by the insolent trollop to distract the gargantuan destroyer from imminently assaulting the Republic ship caught between it and the _Medusa_.

By attacking her ship under a flag of insurrection, Allina had hoped that the two destroyers would then turn on each other and ignore the Republic ship, giving it a chance to escape to hyperspace.

It had worked.

Though, admittedly, it had taken Farran almost an hour to work that out; comm. channels between the greater ships had been unexpectedly cut off by the Republic cruiser.

By that time, the _Medusa_'s fighter complement had been decimated by the superiorly trained and numbered pilots of the flagship, though it too had lost many, which would have to be replaced. The smaller destroyer's main generator and primary engines had been destroyed and disabled by the Republic during the initial moments of the battle, and the _Fury of Palpatine_'s superior firepower had torn through the hull of the smaller ship like tissue paper, ripping apart the weapons ports along its surface, collapsing the main hangar entry and obliterating the blocky command module and remaining generator within minutes.

The smaller ship hadn't stood a chance—especially not with her shields down.

The only reason she continued to order the remaining crew's execution wasn't out of mercy; to save them from the freezing death of a dying ship. It was punishment.

While she had also been fooled by Allina's ruse, her detached fighters had been ordered to destroy those initially attacking the flagship. Before they had even begun to comply, the main bulk of the _Medusa_'s compliment had joined in the assault on her ship, following the example of the young upstart brat and her Jedi cohorts.

Nothing functioned. The lights were out, and the boarding party had affixed glow rods to their rifles to illuminate them and the way ahead. The engineering specialists she had brought with her, and she herself, all wore breathing masks to supply them with oxygen.

It was chillingly cold aboard the dying ship, but they braved it for a mission she deemed utmost important.

No word had returned of her Empress. The _Medusa_'s deck officer hadn't even signalled to report that she'd been received aboard the ship; providing yet another reason for the brutal executions.

Assault shuttles even now were landing on the flight deck she had departed, dispersing more soldiers into the ship to actively hunt down survivors and assure their deaths.

Sensors picked up that no life pods had yet been launched, and that the full complement of shuttles lay wrecked on either of the hangars. Weapons officers aboard the gargantuan flagship were keeping their keen eyes alert, primed to shoot down any attempts made by the _Medusa_'s crew to escape the death sentence she had brought down upon them all.

Her mission took her to the secondary hangar bay, its normally gaping and ray shielded entry collapsed into rubble and sealed off from the vacuum of space by emergency force fields.

A lone shuttle lay wrecked and half crushed at the edge of the deck's unscarred areas, and a pile of rubble from the ceiling smouldered in a ruinous pile only a few meters ahead of her.

Farran saw it right away, though she gathered by the lack of immediate action from the crew with her that no one else had.

Clutching tightly to the distinctly cylindrical, ornately decorated device she recognised as a weapon, was a pale hand. The single silver ring on the hand's middle finger, embedded with a single, sapphire jewel, gave away the identity of the owner of that hand. And though she could see nothing else of the Empress beneath the ruins of the ceiling, she held hopes that they were not too late.

She turned to face the engineers and white-clad stormtroopers that had followed her into the hangar and hooked a thumb over her shoulder at the smouldering wreckage.

"Get to work."


End file.
